Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There are 1.4 million houses in the State in need of insulation and, according to the Construction Industry Federation, 130,000 non-residential buildings in need of same. In 2012, I detailed a costed plan that would have seen the deep retrofit of these homes. It would have cost €14 billion in 2012 to do so. It would have brought the energy efficiency up to a C1 rating. At the time, an investment of €10,000 into a home, according to IIEA, would have brought the average household a saving of €1,496 per year and have helped Ireland reach its 20% energy efficiency target by 2020. The Government plan, if extrapolated to the same level of homes, will cost the State €24 billion. That is €10 billion extra to be paid by the taxpayer because the Government refused to listen to the good advice of an Opposition Deputy.

When I launched my deep retrofit plan ten years ago, tens of thousands of construction workers were leaving Ireland for Canada and Australia. Implementation would have meant we kept those skilled workers in this State at a time when we needed to have them ready for the housing crisis that was about to come. The Government's plan is to quadruple the number of skilled workers from 4,000 to 17,000 by 2025, at a time when there are radical skills shortages and wage inflation in the construction sector. The lack of skilled workers and proper regulation will be among the biggest challenges. This country is already dealing with a crisis of mica for many people. We are paying €1 million per school because of defects in 40 schools built by one builder. Just under 200,000 houses were built during the Celtic tiger years and it is estimated that half of the apartments built have defects in fire safety and structural problems. We are in a situation where we do not have the necessary skilled workers, are seeking to ramp it up and trying to do it so as to make sure the crises of the past ten years do not happen again.

A constituent of mine gave an example. She applied for a deep retrofit grant in 2019 and moved out of her house in August 2020 for a 12-week period. She and her family are still outside of their home and dealing with a disaster of a builder who was listed on the SEAI website as a contractor to carry out deep retrofits. There are already families suffering from the inability of some to deliver what they are meant to. Everything done to her house was substandard. She has contacted the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, a number of times and had meetings with the CEO of SEAI but is getting nowhere. They are at the end of their tether. I predict that under this Government we will see many people in her situation.

I support deep retrofit. It is low-hanging fruit. It saves energy and is by far the best way to reduce our carbon footprint, save money and make homes warmer and more comfortable. Saving energy is the most important thing we can do. It is better than producing new renewable energy and we could be more far more ambitious with regard to saving energy in this State. I drive past the justice building in Navan every day and it looks like Las Vegas with many blinding lights lit up through the night. The Government is glacial in rolling out the retrofit programme. My worry is the Government had a target of 50,000 homes per year and has not once hit 20,000. Even in 2020, only 18,400 were hit. The Government is making promises about what it will deliver on targets it has not met so far.

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