Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Retrofitting should apply to some of the old local authority estates, both urban and rural. Deputy Colreavy mentioned non-cavity walls and some of those houses were built as mass concrete buildings 50 or 60 years ago. There is a major issue of heat loss, even with some of the newer local authority housing estates that were built 25 or 30 years ago. Any retrofitting programme should apply to those houses in the first instance because it would help to deal with fuel poverty, as Deputy Broughan mentioned. Such houses need to be fully retrofitted at this stage. I have seen graphs and figures from experts in this field, which show that if a house is properly retrofitted, heat loss can be reduced by one third or even a half. It will have a big impact on fuel consumption and, consequently, energy needs.

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