Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for this motion, which we fully support.

Retrofitting is a key solution to two crises, namely, the climate crisis and the energy crisis but for us the latter is the immediate one. I will deal with the climate crisis in a minute but first I want to give an account of two homes I visited recently. They were two council-owned homes that were retrofitted to a high BER. One family is very poor with two special needs kids. You walk in the door and the house is warm even though they have not turned on the heating in months. They used to live off a pay-as-you-go card and were spending €60 a week on trying to just keep the heat in the house for the kids. Now they probably spend about €20 in the winter months, so it is a no-brainer. They are not lighting fires, the kids are warm and cosy and the bills are brought right down, particularly in this energy crisis. Another family got a proper retrofit with wraparound insulation, having the walls lined, having the attic properly lagged and getting new windows and doors. They are amazed at how warm the house is, as was I, and they never have to turn on the heating.

Retrofitting is therefore a no-brainer but there are huge problems with the current experience. People who were refused the fuel allowance are unable to access the SEAI schemes in most cases. However, if you are better off – it is important to emphasise this – and you have, for example, €50,000 to put upfront, you can access a very nice retrofitting scheme for your home, whereas the bulk of the other grants are small and piecemeal.

The big question for the Minister of State as a member of the Green Party is what do the current schemes to reduce emissions. We have some worrying complaints from people about the nature of the work being done and its effectiveness. There is little point in doing small, energy-efficiency work if it still leaves a home reliant on fossil fuel and does not actually reduce the CO2 emissions.

The Government's inaction may have failed many this winter but we cannot sit idly by and find ourselves in the same circumstances for the next one. Earlier this year, Dublin City Council's engineer in charge of its retrofit programme said it would take 12 years to complete the retrofitting of the city's social homes at current funding levels, which is completely unacceptable. Where else did we hear about 12 years? How many of us, including the Green Party, went out three years ago and campaigned to an electio based on

What we truly need is a national retrofit body, a company that is fully owned and run by the State, that does what has been described previously, namely trains loads of apprentices, and does not leave the provision of the work to a private company or run the risk that we will not lift people out of energy poverty or reduce emissions. A national retrofit body to directly employ workers and direct the scale and pace of the retrofitting by Government is needed.

The Government constantly talks about the €8 billion it is putting into retrofitting along with targets of 500,000 homes to be deep retrofitted and 400,000 heat pumps. This target was presented as a great achievement of the Green Party but it is precisely what was in the 2019 climate plan. There are several problems with this €8 billion figure. It is clear from the answers I received to earlier questions that this sum is heavily back-loaded to the latter years of 2028, 2029 and 2030. Just like our emissions targets, a lot is based on a mañana, mañanaapproach. It is planned we will spend €1.2 billion in 2028, €1.7 billion in 2029 and €2 billion in 2030. The problem is, of course, that according to the current trends, we will not reach those targets. Like emissions reductions, the Government's ambitions to achieve these targets may mean it and the current Minister of State will be out of office. We know that just ten homes had a deep retrofit last year and up to May this year it seemed that none had been fully completed. This comes on top of ongoing delays and problems facing people getting access to work on their homes that was previously done. I was told months ago that the no second visit rule was gone from the SEAI rules. It is not really gone. People must apply for a scheme that is organised by the one-stop shop or the better energy warmer homes scheme and, therefore, they have to fulfil the criteria of one of them to be in a position to apply for a deep retrofit. The vast majority will not fit into these categories. Other supports for individual upgrades like the attic, wall insulation, heat pumps and so on will not be supported by the SEAI if any work was previously done on the home in question. It may even have been done by a previous owner many years before and anyone seeking support now will be refused. That is just one example of where we are failing in this area.

Another example is people on the median wage who are not on social protection and are not well off. A single parent with two children who came to me during the week is being asked for €15,000 upfront to have the wraparound done on her home. That is not right and that is totally unfair. She can barely even raise the money to get the kids back to school even though she works full time. There is a clear class bias in the distribution of the supports. It is striking and I know there was great work done under the better energy warmer homes scheme but the reality is that the vast majority are not included and will not get access to this. The vast majority of homes that desperately need the retrofitting are, therefore, not benefiting from it.

"Glacial pace" may be the wrong term to use since the glaciers are melting at a rate of knots, but the slow pace of the social housing stock retrofitting is painful. It seems we are less ambitious now and are achieving less than we did in previous years. For example, the State spent €30 million on local authority retrofits in 2014 and retrofitted 18,000 homes. Last year, it spent €21 million and retrofitted just 1,500 homes. I see the targets but we do not see the real delivery or the ambition given the scale of the twin crises of energy and climate. We need to cut our energy demand and our CO₂emissions. I do not accept the argument that it takes time to ramp up delivery. The logic here is that we must send signals to the market and hope that the market will deliver the numbers needed in retrofitted homes, workers and the resources to be allocated. If we have learned any lesson from the current crisis, it must be that leaving something as vital and important as energy and heating homes to the market is a recipe for disaster. This points to the vital need for a public body to take responsibility for retrofitting and for achieving the scale and pace of the work needed, and ensuring that we can recruit and train the workers needed. This cannot be left to the market and private companies.

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