Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to have this discussion today about the Government's retrofitting programme. As I listened to the Minister's speech, there was a great deal on which I would agree with both him and with Deputy Leddin in what he said about the fundamental need for an ambitious retrofitting scheme and the improvements it could potentially mean for people's homes, health and finances, as well as the need from a climate, environmental and energy security perspective. We have seen the increasing importance of that over the past number of weeks. I also agree that this will come down to winning over the public because much of the time, people cannot visualise what it would be like to live in a warm, comfortable home that does not cost you money to keep running. The question for us here today is whether the retrofitting scheme as proposed is sufficient or ambitious enough. Unfortunately, I do not believe that it is. There are some fundamental flaws with the scheme in how it was designed and developed and I will go through them now.

I have previously spoken to the Minister about the Government's ability to meet the retrofitting targets that have been put in place. I understand that over the past number of years and previous to that there has never been a target that has actually been met. The issue which has been raised by participants is timelines, with a 26-month average waiting time. I have spoken to the Minister before about a constituent of mine who was waiting for two and half years for an inspector to come in. I understand that Covid-19 was an issue and caused delays but these were very significant delays and I do not believe that they could all have been put down to Covid-19 reasons.

My other concerns relates to the capacity of the scheme to meet the targets due to the particular market model that is being employed in this programme and in respect of the quality and availability of labour required. The Irish housing stock uses 7% more energy than the average European home and pumps out 60% more carbon dioxide. We are already starting at a particularly low base. It makes the scheme automatically costlier, requiring greater numbers of deeper retrofits just to bring us in line with other European housing stocks.

The scheme provides a grant of 50% of the cost of retrofitting a home to a B2 energy rating and requires homeowners to provide 50% of the funding for a deep retrofit, or 80% to any homeowners for a simple retrofit of attics and walls. Unfortunately, with the rising cost of living, inflation and rising energy prices, people are already pinned to their collar, paying for mortgages and high childcare costs along with everything else. Fewer people will want to take on another loan, regardless of how low the interest rate will be and few people will be in a position to take on a loan of that type.

The significant amount of feedback from the public about which the Minister has spoken shows there is a great deal of interest and that many people want to do this. The feedback I am receiving is that many people will not be able to afford to do it unless they are particularly wealthy or financially comfortable. People feel that to do this, they will have to take on yet another unaffordable loan or live with rising heating costs. They feel that they are being stuck in the middle with this and are worrying that they will continue to suffer as the cost of living puts many of these choices out of reach.

Rising inflation will also mean that the cost of materials to facilitate retrofitting on this scale will continue to rise as well. When asked how the Government will ensure the scheme will remain affordable for people and for the State, trickle-down economics is referred to. I have been hearing the phrase from Government circles that these measures reflect the step change needed to deliver on the retrofitting target of half a million homes by 2030. The general principle is that once the private sector engages in the scheme, over time the cost of retrofitting will go down. In the meantime, this scheme is primarily targeting those who can afford to deep-retrofit their home.

Once again, these measures are not targeted at those who need retrofitting but rather it is targeted at those who can already afford it, to attract more investment from the private sector while the Government hedges its bets that prices will go down enough in order that everybody at some stage will be able to afford a deep retrofit in future.

Meanwhile, low-income households are waiting up to 24 months to get their home retrofitted through the SEAI better warmer homes scheme. I understand the Minister has announced an expansion of the scheme and proposes to deliver 400 units a month. Last year, in 2021, 177 homes a month were retrofitted under this scheme. The target was actually 5,500 and only 2,126 were retrofitted. That means about 4,800 homes will be retrofitted in 2022, which is nearly 1,000 less than last year’s target. If I have those figures wrong I would appreciate an email to that effect but that is my reading of the figures that we are receiving through the replies to parliamentary questions.

When we look at this scheme it seems to us that the Government is targeting the wrong cohort of people. We need to target those who have a greater need to reduce their energy costs and who cannot afford to take on another loan.

What is the solution and the alternative? The Social Democrats have cited a pay-as-you-save scheme instead of a national retrofitting loan scheme. This would enable homeowners to get the finance up front and then pay off the costs as they save on electricity bills over time. This was a policy mooted by other, previous Governments since 2011 but has never really formed any serious policy. It is something that is, however, possible and that the Social Democrats believe should have formed the basis of this retrofitting scheme.

Berlin has been a front runner of success in this model. It began its Berlin Energy Saving Partnerships with the Berlin Energy Agency in 1996. One key to the success of the programme has been its financing, which relieved the owners of investment costs. Renovations have been paid for via loans, after calculations by accredited energy systems companies of the possible energy cost returns. The investments in Berlin have paid for themselves within ten years. In the 2000s these so-called energy performance contracts have become an established model for financing around the world and there is no reason why a similar model could be done here. The Social Democrats believe that this is the preferable model.

When it comes to the cost of this, I will refer quickly to the matter of the carbon tax, as I know it has been a matter of a great deal of discussion lately. There is much misinformation about this tax and unfortunately it is being used by some parties to create an environmental bogeyman. The Social Democrats believe that the entirety of the carbon tax should be ring-fenced and applied to this retrofitting programme and not just the tax increase. I find it interesting that there are many Ministers and Deputies who, when talking about the carbon tax, continually say that the carbon tax goes towards retrofitting.

It does not. It is the increases we have seen over the last number of budgets that have been ring-fenced and go towards retrofitting, but the bulk of the carbon tax does not. We believe that if the Government had taken the entirety of the carbon tax and put it into this retrofitting scheme, to provide an upfront payment so householders can get the retrofitting done and not have to worry about taking out loans but pay it back over the following years, it would have been a much more appropriate, urgent and ambitious way to deal with the retrofitting programme. It is unfortunate that the discussion is now coming down to the carbon tax being at fault for all our ills at present. That will not do us any favours at all and it certainly will not do any favours for any of our climate actions or ambitions for meeting our targets.

I have some concerns about the quality and availability of labour for the retrofitting scheme. The Minister referred to the scheme as a signal for the construction industry to ramp up the number of workers skilled in retrofitting. However, there is such a dearth of skilled workers in the construction industry at present that we will face serious challenges in getting a sufficient number of skilled workers into the sector. There was already a need for an extra 27,000 construction workers before the retrofit plan was announced. There will have to be significant ramping up of these numbers to keep the scheme sustainable in terms of quality and availability. Furthermore, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science promises a range of options will be made available from short courses to full-time or part-time courses, but those schemes have not been ramped up sufficiently either. There are only 104 students enrolled on nearly zero energy building, NZEB, schemes in 2022, so there has to be a great deal more focus on that. In fact, I have been doing a deep retrofit on my home in the last year, which is still not finished, and we have had serious problems getting workers on-site. We found that we might have a team of workers in to do the insulation or whatever, they could be there for half an hour and then they get a text message and go off to a different site. We could be left for days not knowing when they would return. Construction workers is a major issue that has to be examined.

We also must examine the issue of quality control. I am running out of time, but we cannot run the risk of being in a position where we will have to retrofit retrofits. If there was some quality assurance or quality control put in place as part of this programme, it would be very welcome.

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