Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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180. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the progress to date on the national retrofitting programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1580/21]

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 the national retrofit programme to achieve these targets is well underway.  Some €221.5 million in capital funding has been provided this year for SEAI residential and community retrofit programmes.  This represents an 82% increase on the 2020 allocation and is the largest amount ever for the schemes.  This allocation has facilitated the expansion and improvement of existing SEAI grant schemes and the introduction of new initiatives.  The funding has already supported calls for projects under the new National Retrofit (One-Stop-Shop Development) scheme and the Community Energy Grant Scheme as well as a €47 million increase in funding for energy poverty schemes.  Further SEAI administered retrofit initiatives will be launched in the coming months. 

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.

It is essential that appropriate structures and governance arrangements are put in place to help us meet our retrofit targets.  For that reason, another key development was the designation of the SEAI as the National Retrofit Delivery Office.  Significant additional resources have been provided to SEAI to increase the capacity of the organisation to drive delivery of our retrofit targets.