Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I move:

"That Seanad Éireann:

congratulates those progressive local authorities, such as Fingal County Council, who are now predicating planning permissions with energy and insulation standards which are twice as efficient as those of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government;

recognises that following the delayed introduction of an energy rating label for all houses from next year that regrettably hundreds of thousands of existing houses with poor energy efficiency, such as hollow block built homes, will have a lower energy rating and consequently a lower resale value and that home owners will continue to pay more every single year into the future to pay for the heating of those homes;

is conscious that this and the studied indifference of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to our commitments under the Kyoto Protocols with regard to insulation and energy standards for the last eight years has resulted in the construction of at least 250,000 substandard houses, and that these facts may well leave the Department open to charges of misfeasance or malfeasance and the State exposed to claims for compensation; and

demands that the Government take immediate action to bring Ireland into line with Kyoto Protocols by adopting the Fingal standards as national standards and by completely prohibiting the use of hollow blocks for home building;

Additionally this House rejects completely the attempts to transfer responsibility for this mess to the citizen who is being asked to turn down the heat as part of the Power of One campaign when the truth is that this problem can only be resolved through the power of two departments."

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and I look forward to the debate. This is the fourth time I have raised this issue and I know I will not make any progress, but what I am highlighting is highly irresponsible and scandalous. There is a lack of understanding, which may be deliberate or otherwise, in high places.

The energy regulations for buildings are made by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on the advice of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. Two Departments are caught in the middle on this issue and that is causing a problem. I am raising the issue because young couples are paying top dollar for their houses. They will pay mortgages for 30 or more years but they will also pay twice as much as they should to heat those houses. The saleability of their houses will be much reduced when the building energy rating is attached. On 1 January 2007 every new house on the market will have to have a building energy rating, which outlines how sound is its insulation, how much it costs to heat and how it retains its heat. Houses built in the Dublin area since 1998 will be in the rating's second class.

The political issue relates to the Kyoto Agreement, to which Ireland signed up in 1997. The State agreed to meet certain commitments and the Government was required to take decisions regarding heat loss and so on. Appalling decisions were taken and, according to a well publicised document released under the Freedom of Information Act 1997, the reason for them was the protection of the hollow block industry. The strategy at the time was to protect the industry. A letter signed by an official in the Department of the Environment in May 1998 states:

We have to review our technical guidance documentation due to CO2 emissions targets that we now have to meet under the Kyoto Convention 1997. However, we do not want to signal this to the outside world just yet because the next leap in building standard installation will probably involve making it difficult for hollow block construction, used widely in the Dublin area, to survive. This has implications for manufacturers of hollow blocks.

This is appalling.

In 1992, Albert Reynolds returned from the Edinburgh Summit with £8 billion in his back pocket to spend on the people. A survey conducted on where the money was spent some time later found that £6 billion of this passed through one company, CRH. These are the people we are trying to protect for all the wrong reasons. In 1998 the Minister was poorly advised to take this decision and it was completely wrong.

Since then 250,000 houses have been built in the greater Dublin region with hollow blocks, which would be used to build cow sheds in the Minister of State's constituency if people could not afford any better. They would not be used in Cork, Kerry or elsewhere in Munster to build houses but such blocks are used everywhere in Dublin for speculative housing. It is completely and utterly wrong to protect an industry that does not need protection.

On television last week, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources stated one of the reasons the changeover from hollow blocks did not take place was it would add £800 to the cost of a house and he did not want to get into the issue. The Minister of State and I debated the first-time buyer's grant on a number of occasions and I could not disagree that builders added the grant to the price of the house and, therefore, the buyer gained nothing. I opposed my Fine Gael colleagues by stating there was sense in that argument and we had to be careful about it.

However, on the other hand, if the price of the house was increased, the grant would not be added to the price because people were only paying what they could afford. The reality is the change from hollow blocks would have come out of the builder's pocket.

I draw attention to what is being done in this area. I am pleased to advise the House that Fingal County Council, in my local authority area, is attaching to planning permissions a condition in respect of energy and insulation standards, which are twice as efficient as those required by the Departments of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources and Environment, Heritage and Local Government, whichever of those Departments we want to blame for that. I am informed that Bray, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Clare and Galway county council areas are also considering the requirement of these precise standards. A position will develop whereby we will be left behind in terms of the Government requirement and national figures in this area.

The energy label that will come into play on 1 January next, which is stated in the Government's amendment to the motion to be an advance, is being delayed. It could have been in place from 1 January this year. I asked in the House this time last year that it be brought into operation in January of this year, but the Government refused to do that because it wanted to help the building industry again. Is it any wonder that the Government is tied in so much with the building industry and that it gets such bad publicity in that respect? This was wrong.

On 1 January next year every new house put on the market will be required to have an energy rating. That rating will show that houses built with hollow blocks will be of a lower standard than houses that are insulated. That requirement should also apply to second-hand houses from next year and should not be deferred to a later date. I ask the Minister of State to examine this requirement carefully.

In their amendment, Members on the Government side congratulate the Government on its prompt action in implementing the EU energy performance directive by bringing in the new rating from 1 January 2007, but that is factually incorrect. I asked the Government in this House a year ago to implement that directive on 1 January, which was when it was due to come into operation, but it delayed its implementation. The Government side will vote here tonight on something that is incorrect; its amendment is factually incorrect. Members on the Government side should check the record of the House. This time last year when I asked for this directive to be brought into operation at the time Europe required us to do so, namely in January of this year, the Government delayed it implementation. It did not implement it early.

The amendment to the motion congratulates the Government its prompt action in implementing the EU energy performance of buildings directive, but that is not correct. The reality is that the standard of insulation has been reduced, on foot of reasons given by the Government, on the basis of the energy research group set up effectively by the Department and known as the Building Regulations Advisory Board. The Government did this to partly facilitate the building of certain constructions. The Government is effectively saying that it will not apply the required standard because it is too difficult to build or it is easier to build without adhering to it. The reason for this is that hollow block building involves one row of blocks while cavity wall building involves two rows of blocks with a space left in between, and buildings with cavity walls cannot be slapped up as quickly as those with hollow block walls. That is what the Government was considering in terms of the building of constructions. Another reason for its action was to avoid our going too far ahead of the UK where currently proposed values are less ambitious. What is being done in this area is being determined by the UK in terms of it protecting its building industry.

The last paragraph of the amendment to the motion states that the House endorses the performance-based approach, which facilitates a choice of building materials, etc., but what does that mean? I will explain it but in doing so I will probably quickly lose my audience. This is the difficulty we have in getting the media and ordinary people to consider this problem. They will not know about it until they are caught. The problem is that there are two methods of measuring in terms of insulation. One is the elemental method whereby all that is measured is the value of the insulation of what is put into the House and the other method, which is the one that has been decided to be used here, is the overall heat loss method. A recent approach taken by the building research establishment in the UK, which is independent, is the correct way, namely to measure how much energy it takes to heat a house. The reality is that hollow block built homes require twice as much energy to heat as timber framed homes and those in which other insulation methods have been used.

I guarantee that the Minister of State will not deal in his reply with what I propose. If we were to take on board what I suggest and if the Government was to bring the national figures in line with has been adopted by Fingal County Council, that would result in a 70,000 tonnes reduction in Ireland's CO2 emissions per year not only for one year but forever. If the Minister of State was to accept what I have proposed, in approximately 12 years' time we would save a million tonnes in terms of the level of our usual emissions, which would bring us well into line with what is required of us under the Kyoto Protocol. These measures could be introduced now. If they were we would gain by them. They would also result in a gain for house buyers, our energy requirements and the global environment. There is no reason the Minister of State should not accept and adopt my proposals.