Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent)
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23. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the percentage of houses, business premises community and public buildings evaluated up to date for building energy rating; the status of the various BER rating for these buildings; if he will provide a significant increase in funding in 2015 to dramatically progress retrofit programmes to bring the building stock up to an acceptable level of energy efficiency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47352/14]

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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The Building Energy Rating (BER) scheme was established under the European Communities (Energy Performance of Buildings) Regulations 2006. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) is designated as the issuing authority with responsibility for registering BER assessors, logging BER assessments and managing the BER scheme. The BER was introduced for new dwellings in January 2007 and for all buildings from 1 January 2009.

As at the end of November 2014 there were over 511,000 BER certificates for individual dwellings, and over 27,000 BER certificates for buildings other than dwellings, in place. In terms of domestic dwellings this number represents approximately 25% of the national dwelling stock and suggests that the legislation, along with increasing consumer awareness of the benefit of an improved energy rating, is having a demonstrable impact in the market. With respect to the distribution of ratings, the majority are in the C to D range for both domestic and non-domestic buildings.

A capital allocation of €39m was secured in Budget 2015 for the Better Energy Programme, which provides grant funding across various schemes to private homeowners, vulnerable consumers and local communities to retrofit their dwellings and local facilities.