Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

The home energy saving, HES, scheme, which opened for applications on 25 March, provides grant assistance for a range of energy efficiency applications. These include roof insulation, as well as specific internal and external wall insulation, and boilers and heating controls. Grant assistance is also provided for the assessment of energy upgrade requirements, through a building energy rating, BER, rating before and after the remedial works. Applications were selected for inclusion in the scheme on the basis of expert advice from Sustainable Energy Ireland, SEI, and in light of the pilot phase of the scheme last year. SEI recommended those applications to my Department which it considered optimum in terms of delivering significant energy savings to home owners at least cost and as representing best use of budgetary resources.

Replacement windows are not currently eligible for grant assistance under the scheme. My Department and SEI are keeping the scheme under constant review and will continue to give consideration to the scope for adding other measures, subject to budgetary and technical considerations. Similar to the greener homes scheme, it is anticipated that the HES scheme will evolve and adapt as it rolls out and as the market for these applications matures. This may give rise to changes to the applications eligible under the scheme over time.

To date, there has been very strong interest in taking up grant offers for the existing six measures. Since the scheme opened less than three months ago, grants worth €16 million have been offered to 12,000 home owners nationwide. There are critical benefits accruing for the construction industry from the scheme in terms of economic activity, retraining and job retention. To date, more than 2,000 contractors have registered with SEI to install approved applications under the scheme, with a similar number of BER assessors also being deployed.

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