Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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154. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment what measures are being taken to reduce the current wait times, currently in excess of 20 months, on works completing from applications made on free energy upgrades under the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55007/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Better Energy Warmer Homes Scheme delivers a range of energy efficiency measures free of charge to households vulnerable to energy poverty. This year's budget of €148.5 million is the highest ever.

Increased awareness of the multiple benefits of retrofit and improvements to the Warmer Homes Scheme is driving increased levels of demand for the scheme with over 23,000 applications received over the period from January 2022 to end November 2023.

The Scheme is delivering deeper upgrades with more emissions reductions and energy savings for homeowners. The average cost of upgrades increased to €24,000 in 2023 and these deeper upgrades take a longer time per home to complete.

The average waiting time from application to completion for homes completed to date in 2023 was 20 months. This is a decrease from an average of 26 months for homes completed in 2022. The reduction in wait times follows a range of measures introduced by the Department and SEAI including enhanced budgets; increased staffing resources in SEAI; and actions to address supply chain challenges.

SEAI also established a new contractor panel in September this year, with expanded capacity.

To end November this year, over 5,300 homes have been upgraded. This is already more homes than were completed under the scheme in all of 2022 when a total of 4,438 homes were completed. SEAI is on target to upgrade 6,000 homes under the scheme by the end of this year.

My officials continue to work with the SEAI to maximise and accelerate the output of free energy upgrades delivered.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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160. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment how many retrofits were carried out in 2020, 2021, 2022 and to date in 2023, per SEAI scheme; the post-BER ratings per SEAI scheme in 2020, 2021, 2022 and in to date 2023, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [55020/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The National Retrofit Plan sets out the Government's approach to achieving the Climate Action Plan targets of upgrading the equivalent of 500,000 homes to a BER B2/cost-optimal and installing 400,000 heat pumps to replace older, less efficient heating systems by 2030. To promote and incentivise the achievement of these targets, last year the Government approved a package of significantly enhanced supports to make it easier and more affordable for homeowners to undertake home energy upgrades.

Following the introduction of the new measures, demand across the SEAI grant-supported schemes has been exceptionally high. The following figures from SEAI show the number of home energy upgrades since 2020:

• 2020: 17,546 home energy upgrades, of which 3,278 achieved a post works BER of B2 or better.
• 2021: 15,246 home energy upgrades, of which 4,345 achieved a post works BER of B2 or better.
• 2022: 27,199 home energy upgrades, of which 8,481 achieved a post works BER of B2 or better.
• 2023 to end November: 43,376 home energy upgrades, surpassing the full-year target figure of just over 37,000. The number of energy efficiency upgrades to a post-works BER of B2 or better at end of November stands at 15,753 versus the full-year target figure of 13,846.