Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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152. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of the designated national retrofitting delivery body promised in the programme for Government by the end of 2020; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35065/20]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Programme for Government and the Climate Action Plan set ambitious targets to retrofit 500,000 homes to a Building Energy Rating of B2/cost optimal and to install 400,000 heat pumps in existing buildings over the next 10 years. The development of a new national retrofit plan to achieve these targets is well underway. Budget 2021 provided €221.5 million in capital funding for Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland residential and community retrofit programmes. This represents an 82% increase on the 2020 allocation and is the largest amount ever for the schemes. A further allocation of €65 million has been provided to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to support the retrofitting of local authority homes.  These allocations will kick-start the first phase of our national retrofit plan.

It is essential that appropriate structures and governance arrangements are put in place to help us meet our retrofit targets.  For that reason, a further key aspect of phase one of the retrofit plan was the recently announced designation of the SEAI as the National Retrofit Office.  Significant additional resources were provided as part of Budget 2021 to increase the capacity of the organisation to drive delivery of our retrofit targets.