Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 327: To ask the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources the budget allocated to Sustainable Energy Ireland for the training of building energy rating assessors; the number of training places available in the further education sector for building energy rating assessors; the number of registered building energy rating assessors currently working here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8671/07]

Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)
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Sustainable Energy Ireland's responsibilities with respect to training was to review the possible approaches to training, to advise the Energy Performance Buildings Directive Implementation Group on these approaches and, following consideration by the Implementation Group, to produce a training specification for Building Energy Rating (BER) training. There was no specific training budget required.

A specification entitled "Assessor Training Programmes for: Building Energy Rating (BER) of New Dwellings" was published by SEI in October 2006. This document is downloadable from www.sei.ie/epbd (training link).

BER training may be provided by any training provider that successfully meets all elements of the BER training specification which includes the requirement that BER training programmes must be validated by a national accreditation body e.g. Further Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC) or Higher Education and Training Awards Council (FETAC).

To date the following three training providers have developed training programmes that meet this training specification. These are:

Cork Institute of Technology (CIT)

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)

Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).

All three providers are now in a position to offer validated training programmes. The details of each programme including start dates and prequalification requirements can be accessed from SEI's website. An estimate of the number of training places available is given in the table below.

There has been has been a lot of interest in these training programmes and most of the scheduled programmes are fully booked. However, training providers are planning to organise more training programmes to meet additional demand. A number of other training providers are also in the process of developing programmes to meet the training specification.

GMIT was the first training provider to provide BER training and they ran 3 programmes in December 2006. 62 people successfully completed this training and they will eligible to apply for registration as BER Assessors, provided they meet all other terms and conditions of registration. Contact details for these trained persons are posted on www.sei.ie/epbd (BER assessors).

BER Certificates must only be generated for dwellings that are being offered for sale or rent, where planning permission for that dwelling was applied for on or after 1 January 2007. Given the normal planning and construction timescales it is expected that demand for BERs for new homes will begin to grow from about mid 2007 and that the initial volume of work to be carried out by registered BER assessors will be minimal in the first half of 2007.