Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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68. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of households that have applied for the national home retrofit scheme since its commencement; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30012/21]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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My Department funds a number of SEAI grant schemes to support homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their properties. Partial grants are available for individuals that can afford to contribute to the cost of upgrades as well as free energy efficiency retrofits for people at risk of energy poverty.

€221.5 million in capital funding has been provided this year for SEAI residential and community retrofit programmes (including Solar PV). This represents an additional €100 million, or an 82% increase, on the 2020 allocation and is the largest ever budget for the schemes.  Of this amount, €109 million in exchequer funding has been provided to support lower income households to retrofit their homes.  The remainder of the 2021 budget (€112.5 million) will be spent on expanding other existing SEAI grant schemes and introducing new initiatives.

The new National Home Retrofit Scheme (One-Stop-Shop Development Call) is one such initiative and opened for applications last September with a budget of €21.5 million.

This new support scheme is designed to encourage the development of retrofit One-Stop-Shops, to support home retrofit on a larger scale, and support the growth of the retrofitting industry. The scheme facilitates home upgrades for private households, registered Housing Associations and Local Authorities who wish to participate in delivering home energy efficiency upgrades.

One-Stop-Shops will bring benefits for homeowners and for the supply side. A key objective of One-Stop-Shops is to make retrofit easier to do and more attractive to homeowners. Given the scale of national retrofitting targets, the One-Stop-Shops provide a key opportunity for the development and growth of the retrofit sector and the supply chain with significant job growth potential. One of the characteristics of the One-Stop-Shop model is aggregation to facilitate increased efficiencies and scale. Applications are made by the One-Stop-Shop to deliver the energy efficiency upgrade of a stipulated number of qualifying homes.

To date, 47 applications have been submitted by 23 developing One-Stop-Shops. Between them the contracts approved entail upgrades for over 1,500 homes to a B2 or cost optimal energy standard as per Part L of the Building Regulation.

More details of this scheme, which has been well received by the market, are available on the SEAI website at: .