Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I move:

That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Planning and Development Act 2000 to exempt external wall insulation from planning permission, with the exception of certain limited circumstances.

This Bill is inspired by a particular case, that of Clive and Samantha Ryan, who live in Kilnamanagh, Tallaght. In the past week, thankfully, they have finally been granted planning permission for external wall insulation that they installed on their home six years ago. This news is, of course, very welcome. It is a massive relief for the family because they were threatened with five years in prison if they did not remove the wraparound insulation. This was despite the fact that they had used a Government grant from the SEAI as well as an SEAI-approved contractor to install the insulation. This was clearly a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. One arm of the State, the SEAI, was rightly promoting retrofitting and the reduction of carbon emissions, which would reduce the family's energy bills, while another, South Dublin County Council, was implementing planning laws that the Government had failed to update in line with the legally binding climate action laws. It is the Government that is at fault.

The Minister for Housing has himself admitted that new legislation is needed and has said public consultation will be held on it this year. However, given the roll-back of climate action across a range of areas by the right-wing Fianna Fáil–Fine Gael–Lowry Government, I will not be holding my breath. Since January, it has reneged on previous Government commitments to introduce minimum BER standards for the private rental sector. It has reneged on banning imports of fracked gas and is now welcoming in fracked LNG from the US. It is trying to overturn the moratorium on constructing new data centres in the Dublin area and turning Ireland into a Wild West for the uncontrolled fossil-fuelled expansion of AI and data centres. Therefore, I do not trust the Government to take action on this very simple issue either. People Before Profit and I are introducing this Bill to get the Government to move on this as quickly as possible.

The purpose of our Bill is to ensure that outrageous situations such as the one experienced by Clive and Samantha Ryan will never happen again. The Bill does this by exempting external wall insulation from planning permission, except in certain very limited circumstances - for example, if a building is a protected structure or is in an architectural conservation area. This is similar to the current exemption that exists for installing solar panels, and the reasoning for it is the same. The climate and cost-savings benefits outweigh any minor aesthetic impacts in the overwhelming majority of cases. The presumption should be that external wall insulation, just like solar panels, is exempt from planning permission. It is not rocket science; it is simple common sense.

When I raised this with the Taoiseach, he told me the following: "We want people to insulate. We do not want people to be penalised for insulation." However, penalisation is exactly what the Government is doing every day, not just by leaving people at risk of imprisonment for insulating their homes but also by refusing to fund the cost of home retrofits, even though retrofitting is a win–win for people, for the cost of living and for our environment. Anyone who gets a home retrofitted, including Clive and Samantha, is always delighted at how much more comfortable that home is and how much they save on their energy bills. When you talk to Clive and Samantha about it, despite everything they have been through, you note that they sing the praises of external insulation, but the Government persists in forcing people to pay thousands of euro to finance home retrofits. The grants on offer are entirely inadequate to meet the costs involved, and the practice of individual home retrofitting by a hodgepodge of private contractors is incredibly inefficient. What is needed is a State-wide public retrofitting programme carried out for free by a State construction company. It would go into towns and villages and retrofit whole estates at the same time, regardless of whether they are privately owned or owned by the council. This would generate huge economies-of-scale savings and ensure the benefits of climate action are shared equally by all.

At the moment, low-paid workers and renters are being excluded from retrofitting although they are the ones who would benefit most from lower energy bills. Instead of including them, the Government has chosen to target retrofitting grants and tax breaks at better-off homeowners and landlords because they are the core voter base of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the right-wing Independents. It is a disgrace that this kind of self-serving political logic still dominates in the midst of a climate emergency.

We need to recognise that this is an existential crisis and immediately move to universal free retrofitting for all. Exempting external wall insulation is a small but important part of doing so.

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