Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State very much for coming to the Chamber today. I also offer a big welcome to all those present in the Gallery. There are three serious concerns with regard to the criteria for the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grant system for retrofitting and how they apply to thousands of older homes in Dublin and across the country. Houses constructed before 1940 are effectively excluded from a large part of the SEAI energy upgrade scheme. Well over 15,000 homes within Dublin city were constructed before 1940. That is a lot of houses and a lot of families and individuals.

With regard to the scheme targeted at low-income households and social welfare recipients, the better energy warmer homes scheme, and access to the one-stop shop, support is only granted if the property is upgraded to the B2 standard. Not only does that involve great upheaval and work to the house, but it is also nearly impossible to get to that standard in some cases because of the age and construction type of the house.

The third key concern or issue is the cost of retrofitting. The Minister of State and I have engaged on this matter previously. The cost is simply prohibitive for many households, particularly those that are struggling to pay their bills at the moment, let alone putting together savings to retrofit their house, thereby ultimately saving themselves money on their energy bills into the future.It is those households, in particular, that I am thinking of with regard to the issues and design flaws, as I see it, in the SEAI grant systems. In the Dublin 7 area alone, about 22% of all houses have building energy ratings, BERs of F or G. There is a cost difference in terms of fuelling such a home relative to a B2 energy rated home of almost €3,000 in a calendar year. That is before we saw prices take off over the past 12 months.

The Government has an enormous target of 500,000 houses to be retrofitted by 2030. There is demand in the areas I am located in from people who want, and urgently need, to retrofit their homes because of the bills they are paying, as well as a huge appetite from communities to engage in community energy-saving and district heating schemes, but we need to get the design of the schemes right.

With regard to the homes constructed before 1940, if they are stone, single-leaf masonry or composite wall construction, in other words, not a cavity construction, they do not qualify for wall insulation schemes. If people do not qualify for wall inflation and happen to have had their attic insulated a number of years ago, they do not qualify for the secondary benefits such as draught proofing, lagging jackets, heating upgrades, windows and doors. I have come across situations on a regular basis whereby people who had their attics done a number of years ago need basic and simple other work done to their houses, yet cannot access schemes because of the age of their houses.

It makes no sense to me that there is a blanket refusal, as I see it, with regard to pre-1940 houses because wall insulation is the only way in to get all of the other work done. While I appreciate that great care needs to be taken and there are different construction needs for stone constructed houses relative to those of a modern construction standard, I do not believe it is impossible to ensure there is wall insulation in these houses. From what I understand from architects, the use of lime pointing is necessary in order to maintain the vapour permeability of such buildings. Why can we not incentivise and maintain this skill, given that there are thousands of such home Dublin?

If we are serious about maintaining and protecting our existing housing stock and not having to raze these houses in a few decades' time and incur the huge carbon cost of building new houses, then we have to protect our existing housing stock in Dublin, in particular because such a large share of the stock was built prior to the 1940s. The SEAI grants need to be designed for those houses.