Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an ambitious plan in that the retrofitting programme aims to make at least 500,000 homes warmer, more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run over the next eight years or so. This will be the largest infrastructural investment this decade, with the State investing €8 billion and a similar amount spent by homeowners.

This programme will need to achieve 50,000 to 70,000 retrofit completions each year to reach its goal of retrofitting 500,000 homes by 2030. Last year, only 18,000 homes were retrofitted in Ireland.

Residential emissions account for about 11% of Ireland's total greenhouse gas, GHG, emissions and generate 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. Irish homes use 7% more energy than the EU average and pump out about 60% more carbon dioxide. Affordability is going to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for the project. We must incentivise homeowners to complete the full programme of works to obtain at least a B2 BER rating. I call on the banks to provide a special package tailored to this scheme to provide low-interest term loans for homeowners who wish to invest in their homes. According to official estimates, a deep retrofit will cost a maximum of €66,000, which means that the State will invest €25,000. This leads to a net overall cost of approximately €40,000 for those going from the lowest energy BER to the highest.

The retrofitting of homes is not only to make life much better, cheaper and less damaging to our planet; it can even be a matter of life and death in respect of securing warmer homes for families and especially for older people. It can also increase the value of our homes. The ESRI has suggested that every point a house moves up the 15-point BER scale adds 1% to the value of the house. To put this another way, for every euro spent on retrofitting, two euro is added to the value of the property. People are therefore investing in their homes to make their lives more comfortable, as well as adding value to their homes.

Some concerns have been expressed to me at a local level. These include the role of the one-stop shop and its management of the entire project. It has been suggested that there will be too much bureaucracy, as there has been in past projects. Concerns have also been expressed that the entire cost of the home energy assessment is borne by the homeowner. Perhaps some of this cost could be grant aided, if a project is completed. Another possible issue is whether enough contractors with suitable workforces will be recruited. The training of staff should not be too onerous and costly.

Regarding my constituency of Clare, there are 43,348 households in the county, according to the most recent census of 2016. Of these, 40,000, or 92%, were built before 2010, which means they were constructed to a lower level of insulation and energy conservation. Some 93%, or just over 40,000, of these households in Clare live in a house or bungalow, while 5%, or 2,703, of households are living in houses rented from the local authority. If we are to achieve these ambitious targets, we must front-load the process of retrofitting these homes by providing funds to the local authorities in the next two to three years. There are 23,500 one or two-person households. Many of these people are elderly and may need further assistance to partake in this programme. More than half, or 25,640, of the homes in Clare are heated by oil-fired systems. A further 15,000 homes are heated by gas, coal, or peat-fired systems. Retrofitting these homes would lead to a dramatic reduction in Clare's carbon emissions.

To review the progress of this programme, I would like to see a monthly update being provided by the SEAI. I refer to something like what is provided in the context of the national broadband plan, NBP, in respect of the website showing information on how that project is progressing. I would like to see similar information on retrofitting being supplied for every local authority area in the country. The information should include the numbers at application, design and construction stages and those completed, as well as the BER rating achieved. The framework for change has been set out. We are now planning the work and we must endeavour to deliver on the plan. The fewer steps we take now, the more we will have to take in future to meet our targets for 2030 and 2050.

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