Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentation. We are now in an emergency situation, both in terms of the SEAI recording that our carbon emissions went up in 2021 - which is not surprising as we were coming out of Covid but, nonetheless, we want to see steady progress - and we have a price emergency. In that context, should we be leaning all the schemes offered by the SEAI much more towards shallow work? It strikes me that, at best, we will get to 30,000 homes under all its initiatives, whereas there are 2 million homes in the country and many of them are in very low BER categories. Is this a time for focusing on shallow measures such as heat controls and cavity wall insulation? I presume the SEAI has a fairly detailed picture of where in the country cavity walls exist - on which estates and in which generation of houses - and how many of them have had work done. Could we make more of an impact quickly by using these more shallow methods? Could we get a very early win, so to speak, by looking at all the housing stock and targeting the worst of it with the cheapest opportunities, be that attic insulation, cavity wall insulation, heat controls or smart meters where they have gone in?