Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, agus fáiltím roimh an Aire Stáit.

As the Minister of State will know, construction on the built environment accounts for 37% of Ireland's carbon emissions, and 14% of that is the embodied carbon emissions. Current analysis is showing we are not on target to reach our emissions reductions in this particular area. The Climate Change Advisory Council has expressed concern at the failure of the Department of housing to act on this particular target reduction.

Tackling the embodied carbon in building is one of those areas where is not seen as being as divisive as perhaps some of the other areas where we are trying to bring down our emissions, such as agriculture and transport. This is in some senses the low-hanging fruit. The Irish Green Building Council has launched a roadmap that is supported by 180 organisations and, as far as I am aware, has cross-political support as. That roadmap acknowledges that while retrofitting will decrease emissions from operating buildings, the new construction that is set out in the national development plan and the Housing for All strategy will negate these savings unless we tackle the embodied carbon in construction. New buildings need to mitigate the embodied carbon and cannot just be focused on energy efficiency. We know all new homes now must be highly energy efficient, thanks to EU directives, but we need to decarbonise the construction process itself.

Another good news story is that this technology is not off-in-the-distance technology like carbon capture. This technology is already here. It is timber-based construction and new building technologies. As Marie Donnelly of the Climate Change Advisory Council said on "Drivetime", Scotland, a country with a similar climate and population to ourselves, is leading the way in timber-built housing and new building technology. There is no reason Ireland cannot be doing the same. It just requires the political will.

Currently, you cannot build any residential property higher than 10 m from a timber-based product. If the building is duplex, the ground floor must be concrete or brick. This is, in effect, a ban on timber-based building technologies. Currently, Part B of the building regulations, dealing with fire safety, is under review as the Minister of State knows. This is the perfect opportunity to address this issue. Changing Part B of the building regulations can be done to both allow timber-based construction but also to ensure that construction is completely compliant with fire safety standards.That can include measures such as concrete stairwells and sprinkler systems in all apartments and mid-rise developments with fire escapes. If we do not do this, it will be virtually impossible for us to reach our 2030 targets in the built environment. We know that currently, 80% of Irish timber is exported to other countries. In Ireland, only 48% of all new scheme homes are timber framed but they cannot be used in mid-rise developments. This is also the type of construction we are trying to promote because it increases the density and creates sustainable communities. This is a win-win scenario all round. The question for the Minister of State, therefore, is whether the Government will amend Part B of the building regulations to allow for timber-based construction.