No apologies have been received today.

The first session between 12.30 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. is with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, on domestic energy efficiency, including the warmer homes scheme, building energy rating, BER, and retrofit programmes. The purpose of today's session is to engage with representatives from the SEAI. I welcome Mr. Dermot Byrne, chair to the board; Mr. William Walsh, chief executive officer; Dr. Ciaran Byrne, director of national retrofit; and Ms Margie McCarthy, director of research and policy insights.

I remind all those in attendance to make sure their phones are either on silent or switched off.

Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make any charges against any person or entity by name or in any such way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The format of the meeting is that I will invite witnesses to make an opening statement of a maximum of five minutes. Once that statement has been delivered, I will call on members of the committee to put their questions in the order in which they have indicated to me, and then non-members if they attend. We operate a rota system, with every member getting an initial four minutes for engagement. It is important to note that four minutes is for both questions and answers and, therefore, it is essential for members to put their questions succinctly and for witnesses to be succinct in their responses. Please note that the duration of this meeting is limited and, therefore, the times must be adhered to. I ask everybody to be focused in their contributions.

We will now take the opening statement from Mr. Dermot Byrne.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for the opportunity to meet with them today to discuss my reappointment to the position of chair to the board of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. The Cathaoirleach has introduced my colleagues, Mr. Walsh, Dr. Byrne and Ms McCarthy. We welcome the opportunity to discuss my service to date and to outline our priorities for the coming term.

I have spent my career working across the value chain in generation, transmission, distribution and operation, starting as a graduate engineer with the ESB in 1973, at the tail end of rural electrification, and retiring as CEO of EirGrid in 2012. I believe a safe, secure and affordable energy supply is at the centre of all our ambitions as a country, both economically and socially. It is crucial to the competitiveness of our economy and the living standards of our citizens.

It has been my honour to serve as chair of the SEAI over the past six years, during a period of significant turbulence in the international energy markets and, of course, the pandemic. It has been a transformative period for us in the SEAI. We have grown exponentially in the scale of the work we do and in the scope of our remit. In 2020, we were an organisation with 95 core staff and now there are over 300 people employed in the organisation. Thanks to record levels of funding from the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, the Department of Climate, Energy, and the Environment as our parent Department, and the Department of Transport, we are now the largest climate actor in the State, with a budget of nearly €930 million this year. This is an eight-fold increase on 2020. This investment will allow us to help thousands more people with the health and comfort of their homes and the predictability of their energy bills. It will mean more businesses of every size will be supported to reduce their overheads, increasing the overall competitiveness and resilience of our economy. It will also ensure that we continue to invest in the most up-to-date, cutting-edge research into the best ways to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel.

Our impact over the past six years since I joined has been significant. We have delivered around 230,000 home energy upgrades during that period, 31,000 of which were through the warmer homes scheme, our free scheme for those at risk of energy poverty. People living in these homes are now insulated from some of the worst effects of the energy insecurity caused by relying on fossil fuels. Retrofitting is also working to bring down our national emissions. The EPA's provisional 2024 data shows that residential sector emissions are down 1.4 million tonnes since 2018, putting us roughly half of the way to meeting the sector's 2030 targets. With the new retrofitting measures recently announced by the Minister, we are preparing for our biggest year ever this year, with a target of 73,000 upgrades, and the indications are already very positive. As of today we have received 33,000 applications so far and there has been a 31% increase in green loans, driven mainly by people investing in upgrading their homes.

On electric vehicles, we are the body that manages the grants for vehicles and chargers and the committee will have seen reports that Ireland reached its 2025 target on EVs. With the volatility of the oil markets and the availability of new, more affordable vehicles, there has never been a better time to consider switching to electric.

We are the national authority on all energy data and it is a big part of the work we do. We have funded research and innovation projects worth €98 million over the past six years, on everything from offshore wind to district heating and how to understand and affect behavioural change. We also do a lot of work with the public sector to help hospitals, schools and other State bodies to decarbonise and put themselves on a more secure footing.

Looking inward, we have been working hard to transform the ways in which we do things. A particular focus for us has been on the customer journey of our users. We are committed to ensuring the experience of those using our programmes is a positive one, while ensuring appropriate safeguards for taxpayers' money are in place. It is something we always work hard to deliver as we continue to grow. I know some members here will have questions on the waiting list for our warmer homes scheme. We are working hard on it and we are developing a warmer homes scheme waiting list action plan to reduce wait times, which will be submitted to the Minister for consideration shortly. We have also put in place a new IT strategy, looking at efficiencies and opportunities for automation, new and innovative businesses processes with an emphasis on value for money, and other internal operational and policy improvements, all with a view to streamlining our processes and delivering on our ever-increasing annual targets.

Looking ahead, the board and I recently approved a new strategy for 2026 to 2030. It sets out how we plan to do even more to help Ireland move away from fossil fuels and towards more secure, sustainable and renewable sources of energy. This is the only way we can break the link between our economic progress and the unpredictability of international actors, in particular the fossil fuel markets. It has six sections, looking at the role of energy in securing a more competitive, affordable, healthier and inclusive Ireland. The identification of these goals points to the centrality of sustainable energy in everything we want to do as a country and highlights the importance of the work we are doing at the SEAI. There is real momentum behind our programmes now. They have never been more relevant or urgent given the international context. I am absolutely committed to driving them forward in my role as chair and I look forward to the term ahead. I thank committee members for their attention and my colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions they may have.

I thank Mr. Byrne for his presentation and I thank the witnesses for coming in today. Their timing is quite fortuitous considering the past few weeks we have had. In the first instance I want to focus on the warmer homes scheme. Will Mr. Byrne tell me what is the current average wait time for accessing it?

The average wait time from end to end is of the order of 24 months. The homeowners receive the benefits of the warmer homes scheme much earlier than this, perhaps after 18 or 19 months. It is too long and we are working hard to rectify it.

What measures is the SEAI putting in place to rectify it? There has been a very long wait time for a number of years.

I will ask Dr. Byrne to step in here but we are preparing the action plan and looking at every aspect of the process. It is quite a complex process from end to end and we are looking at what we can do along that journey. There will be some policy aspects which we will be discussing with the Minister also.

I thank Deputy Whitmore for the question. As the chair has said, there is no silver bullet so we are looking across the system. For example, we are just about to complete a framework tender. We have gone to tender again and we have put €1.2 billion into trying to expand the number of contractors delivering works. We are also taking a very close and hard look at individual contractor performance, in terms of the speed of the works and the quality of the works, so we are amping up the system with regard to the contractors. In this regard, we are resourced internally to bring in a more active contractor manager to work directly with contractors.

Deputy Whitmore is probably aware of the broad stages of the programme, which are that people apply, they get a pre-works BER certificate, a survey and a contractor, and then they complete. When the contractor turns up at the homeowner's door effectively they have stopped waiting. We are putting in place KPIs on this and we are putting in place a process so we know exactly when the wait stops on an individual home basis. We have a managing agent that does a lot of the work on the pre-work BER certificate for us. We recently retendered this contract and we are putting in new efficiencies. We are working on reducing the waiting times for the pre-BER certificate and the survey and on accelerating and increasing contractor capacity and the speed of delivery of the works.

What is the target? It is 24 months now but what will be the target wait once these measures are in place? What is the SEAI working towards?

At this exact point we do not have a specific end time target but what I can say is that on this year's budget alone we will increase the output by 40%. Last year we had a budget to do 7,400 homes and this year we will deliver 11,500 homes. We will have a 40% increase in the output this year. While we are doing this, we are also building in the warmer homes action plan. It is hard to say what exactly the endpoint target may be but we believe we will significantly reduce it. Certainly we want to be in a position to give homeowners better individual visibility. Instead of a more generic answer people want individual visibility on where their specific home is on the journey as against where all the homes are.

I am sorry but I am just conscious of time. I am just looking at the capital investment. It was €246 million for the warmer homes schemes for 2025 and 8,000 homes were done. Is that correct?

Yes.

How much money was not used out of that budget last year?

We had a budget last year of €280 million and €246 million was spent. I think €34 million was the amount not spent.

The €246 million was spent on 8,000 homes.

The €246 million was spent. We had a budget for just over 7,000. We actually did more homes last year than we had targeted but they came in at a price-per-home of less than what the budget was, so we came in below budget.

I thank Mr. Byrne. How many homes are eligible for the warmer homes scheme? I have been trying to find out the answer to this question from the SEAI.

Dr. Byrne may have a number.

That is a good question.

It must be, because I have asked it a number of times of the Department.

Yes, and the reason the Deputy has not got a specific number - we are pretty good on numbers in fairness to us - is that we do not hold all of the cards. If the Deputy will give me a moment to explain, 470,000 people are eligible for fuel allowance. People eligible for fuel allowance also qualify for the warmer homes scheme. The fuel allowance also covers people who rent. One of the criteria for the warmer homes scheme is that people must own and occupy their homes. If we take it that, on average, two thirds of homes are owner-occupied and one third are rented, and we apply that ratio to the 470,000, then that gets us to 310,000 households.

There are six other criteria for the warmer homes scheme, including things like the carers allowance, the domiciliary care allowance, etc. Some people, and 58,000 people are receiving the domiciliary care allowance, for example, also qualify for the warmer homes scheme but they may not be on the fuel allowance. That means there could be additional people who qualify. We reckon the number then is between 320,000 and 350,000. The Department of Social Protection will be able to tell the Deputy the definitive number. It understands how many homes are cross-eligible across the different schemes.

I just find it interesting that the SEAI does not have that figure, given it has a budget of €280 million for people on the scheme. I would have thought that the starting point would have been knowing how many people could qualify.

There are six different criteria, however, that mean people are eligible. On the warmer homes scheme, we work on the basis that 470,000 people have the fuel allowance and 310,000 of those people own their homes. About 80% of the applications come through having the fuel allowance as the criterion.

I thank Dr. Byrne.

I call Senator Malcolm Noonan.

I thank the witnesses. I have a few questions. To ask one overarching question, we had Dr. Muireann Lynch and Professor Niall Farrell from the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, with us before the Easter break. There was a widely reported and probably controversial report about the benefits of retrofitting and the contention that it may not be bringing about the carbon savings that were once anticipated because of better performance in buildings and people continuing to use increased energy. Does the SEAI have a view on this? I would be interested to hear it.

Of course, and in our own modelling, we do allow for a certain level of comfort taking. Our warmer homes scheme is called the "warmer homes scheme", so there is an element of comfort taking, and we do allow for that in the modelling. We do accept that aspect but we also model it ourselves. Dr. Byrne may also wish to comment.

That is exactly right. We certainly looked at that report in great detail. When Ms McCarthy and the research team build out the models, they have an allowance factor for comfort taking, which we bring to all the schemes. There is an interesting element, however. The bit we are missing at a societal level is that we are using the BER, which is a static statistic acting as a proxy for how much energy is actually used. It would have been heard from other commentators in the arena that the asset rating is on the house and the energy use is on the people. We could have two identically placed houses, and they will have two completely different energy usages. At best, a model can try to capture some of that. What we see from the perspective of comfort taking, and we notice this from the various social indicators we have, is that a lot of people in the poorer performing homes tend to under heat their homes. When they get the heat up, they tend to overheat homes. To return to the overarching aspect, as our chairman said in his opening statement, the EPA has indicated we are approaching halfway in our target for 2030 in terms of emissions reduction in the residential sector.

I thank Dr. Byrne. My next question relates to a programme for Government commitment concerning support for retrofitting projects which enable neighbours to upgrade their homes together with guided support to make the process easier. Does the SEAI have any indication in respect of developing that approach in terms of neighbours retrofitting homes together and support for it?

I will ask Dr. Byrne to come in in a minute but I think we do two things. We have the community energy grant, CEG, scheme, which combines households with small businesses in an area, or community halls, GAA clubs or whatever. That is a very effective way in which we target particular localities. We did have a pilot a number of years ago as well, and we are still assessing the output from it, where we joined with the local authority in respect of a particular housing scheme in Portmarnock where there were a number of social houses and private houses. In doing the social houses, we put a big effort into trying to combine those with some of the private owners who wanted to come together to do a scheme. That has been successful, and we would like to see it replicated.

To build on the CEG scheme, we also have the sustainable energy communities, SECs. A lot of those have organised meitheals, where communities get together to install things like solar. They are very much done on a localised basis. The pilot scheme our chairman referred to was in the Strandmill estate in Portmarnock. We worked with Fingal County Council. The thesis was that where there is a mixed-tenure estate, with local authority-owned and privately-owned homes, we would retrofit all the homes at the same time. The pilot did work but we got a lot of lessons from it. I will be totally honest and tell the Deputy there was a lot of heavy lifting. The local authority could be very clear in what it was doing, but trying to get the private owners on board was extraordinarily difficult, and many of them did not come on board until, literally, the day the contractors were coming in. Part of the reason for that is when we look at some of those mixed-tenure estates, the economic circumstances of many people in those estates is such that they do not have the resources to go on board with such projects.

We have subsequently built out on that initiative, and we have done a pilot with Monaghan County Council and we are in the process of doing a pilot with Donegal County Council. We are talking about this again too. We previously did some work with Cork County Council, and we are back down with it again.

The other aspect in terms of key lessons from the scheme is this concept of the fear of missing out, FOMO. If people do not join a group scheme today, there is no penalty, per se, so people can get a retrofit done two weeks or six months later. There has to be a really compelling reason to get people to join at the time the contract was there. There is a piece here perhaps in respect of contractors seeing that and in pricing accordingly so they can get the benefit from all the houses in an estate.

I thank Dr. Byrne. I have one final quick question, and it is in relation to-----

I am sorry Senator but Mr. Walsh would like to comment.

To make a final point about the last topic, on our solar programme, which is more fluid than retrofits and easier to install, what we have discovered is that neighbours come together in estates and they achieve economies of scale in getting registered contractors in to do solar, which can bring the price down. We have seen that happening as well, which is another aspect of the work we do.

I thank Mr. Walsh. Regarding some of the pilot work done around traditional buildings with the National Built Heritage Service, there are significantly different approaches in terms of traditional buildings. There are good incentives there now from the Department of housing in relation to retrofitting older buildings. Does the SEAI see the scalability of such work? I am thinking of a recent visit I made to the Iveagh Hostel building where hundreds of timber sash windows had to be replaced. Perhaps simple ecological interventions in these buildings can bring these dwellings up to a high level of thermal comfort without too much intervention in the traditional fabric of those buildings.

I thank the Senator. For the benefit of the other members of the committee, we have a pilot scheme for the retrofitting of traditional homes. I believe somewhere in the region of 250 homes qualify. The initial pilot is 100 homes, and we have 84 people signed up for it already. We have 20 different building professionals on the scheme. Some of the early lessons are in line with exactly what the Senator said, including how we can best retrofit a home and not compromise the heritage aspect.

One important point to make is that when we talk about traditional buildings, by definition this is anything built prior to 1941. We have some of the mass concrete buildings in Marino in Dublin that are traditional, and then we also have a 17th century Georgian building. The menu of works for those is quite different.

One of the immediate lessons concerned technical building professionals. We are going to have to think about how we fund that aspect. If we want people to stick by the rules and do the right thing by the heritage of a home, then we have to provide support in terms of building professionals. The reason we need these professionals is that those traditional homes are built differently. Sticking on moderate insulation, which is non-permeable, onto an older building is a recipe for disaster. That is the first lesson. The question then is how we build out the mix.

Ireland Inc. will have to retrofit those homes, so we will have to build and scale programmes while we are doing a pilot. We are going to end up building an industry behind us that will be able to service the requirements of those homes.

I call Deputy Daly.

I thank any of the attendees whom we have met over the past while for their engagement. They have always been very facilitating with any meetings. What we need, as a country in general, is more energy independence. Of course, we need national independence also but individual householders also need energy independence. We have seen over recent weeks, particularly with the increases in home heating oil prices, which have, as the witnesses know, doubled, that a lot of people, particularly in rural areas and one-off houses, are very exposed. They therefore need to be able to have a quick scheme. I note the ESRI review, which said we are "materially off-track". The ESRI said the shortcomings in hitting the targets were due to high capital costs, administrative complexity, which was mentioned earlier, information constraints and disruption. A lot of people are not in a position to move out of their homes while work is going on there.

There are an awful lot of challenges, and I would like to ask the witnesses about some of them. They have mentioned the waiting list already but only a tiny cohort of households is eligible for the fully funded scheme. According to some of the reports I have, only 7.5% of homes in the warmer homes scheme are retrofitted up to BER B2 standard or higher. When the retrofitting takes place it must be affordable, address the disruption and be fair. There has been Trinity College and ESRI research talking about the green divide.

I have two questions. First, I know SEAI has a new plan coming but there does seem to be, with EVs as well, a green divide in that more affluent areas and people who had access to other places were able to access the schemes better, while people in more rural areas, particularly in the county of Kerry, feel slightly excluded from a lot of these schemes. What are SEAI's plans to make this more accessible for the former, targeting social housing and group schemes? There was a very innovative programme in the John Mitchels area by Tralee Town Council about 15 years ago which saw a heating scheme for the whole area. Wealthier areas seem to be able to bear the upfront costs.

I also ask the witnesses to address one issue in the ESRI funding about exploring alternatives such as using lower carbon alternatives to home heating oil, such as HVO. Obviously, it is not the ideal but maybe it should be explored, given the potential that we are exposed to the higher penalties and higher fines coming from Europe in addressing our targets. Should we in the medium term explore alternative ways to support the lower carbon alternatives to those? Those are my two questions.

I will ask Mr. Walsh to come in but I will just make a comment first. About two thirds of the money we spend on retrofitting goes towards our warmer homes scheme and the other third goes towards the people who can pay, I suppose, and contribute themselves. That might not be reflected in the numbers but a lot of our community energy grant, CEG, scheme goes towards households and people at risk of fuel poverty. Also, a significant amount of the one-stop shop goes towards the housing bodies. In the round, therefore, it is roughly two thirds. That is just one dimension to this. I ask Mr. Walsh to come in on the green divide.

There are a range of questions within the Deputy's question. I know Dr. Byrne and Ms McCarthy both will have contributions so I will try to frame this briefly and then bring them in.

The warmer homes scheme, which is our fully funded scheme, itself straddles two things but, initially, is about addressing fuel poverty. When we go in and do works to a home, we often find they are very far down the scale. They might be Gs, and to take a G up to maybe a C costs a lot more than taking a B to an A. Therefore, in terms of the work we do, we find the works that are appropriate to take place in that home. The target is not to get the homes to B2; the target is to make them as cost-effective as possible, get them up and get the changes made to make those homes more comfortable and warm. The chair mentioned the green divide. The green divide follows the social divide in lots of ways. More EVs have been sold in the past in affluent areas because of the fact that more new cars are bought in affluent areas, so-----

I think one third goes to cars that are worth €55,000 or more. You do not need €5,000 to buy a car if you are able to afford one at that price.

What we see now with electric vehicles is the second-hand market appearing. A three-year-old second-hand vehicle is now cheaper than a three-year-old diesel or petrol car. We are starting to see those changes come through, as happens and as technology evolves.

In terms of the programmes and the budgets we have from an SEAI perspective, two thirds of the budget we have goes into areas of fuel poverty. A significant amount of the budgets we have is put towards that.

I will ask Dr. Byrne to come in on some of the more retrofit pieces and then Ms McCarthy, potentially, on HVO and other technologies that were highlighted in the ESRI report.

One quick clarification in terms of the ESRI: our experience has been that the vast majority of people do not have to move out of their homes when they are getting a deep retrofit done. People doing floor insulation, which is a very small percentage of households, do but for pretty much everything else, you do not.

We have covered the overall budget. When you break it out as to whether or not there is energy poverty, more of it goes in that department. More recently, in the new measures the Minister has just announced, we have increased, for example, the attic and cavity grant to a median of 80% for all homeowners. We have brought that grant back up, reflecting changes in inflation. We also introduced a median 100% attic and cavity grant for people in receipt of social welfare allowances. If you qualify under the warmer homes scheme, you can go ahead and get the attic and cavity median 100% done immediately and not lose your place on the list. We have also put in, for example, a median 100% attic grant for first-time buyers, reflecting that part of the market. We are dealing with the warmer homes here. I am very familiar with that and we have talked about it. However, we are not on a linear journey; we are on a stepwise journey. Obviously, I cannot speak to policy but as to what we are delivering at the moment, we see where it is having impact and where we need to trim our sails, and we do so accordingly. A good example of that is the new measures the Minister introduced just at the start of this year. I am reasonably certain that in another year's time we will look at more measures and where we are having an impact and where we are not. That is how we are trying to address those kinds of things but a significant chunk of the budget goes into energy poverty.

I will ask Ms McCarthy to talk about HVO. She might also speak about some of the research we are looking at in terms of scaling and so on, that social piece.

I will cover a couple of things.

On EVs, what we see, in a similar way to retrofit, is starting with a market that does not exist and then trying to build it up. What we can see now is equalisation of prices for all car ranges, between an ICE vehicle and an EV vehicle.

Similarly, with the retrofit programme, what we have seen is that we now have a body of data as to where our grants are going. We are now beginning to work with various bodies on how we decipher down into the data as to what the socioeconomic background demographics are around that. As Dr. Byrne says, a lot of what we are involved in in SEAI then is to try to plot forward and map out the policies as they are and to ask what other policies, incentives, regulation and awareness are required then to really delve in and address where there are gaps and who does not have access at the moment. That is a high-level look at it.

In answer to some of the things, and before I go on to the transition piece, I want to mention also that we have a lot of supports around awareness. One worth calling out from earlier, from the sustainable energy communities, is even down to community members helping others who maybe cannot go through the administration burden in the same way. We have community members who are helping people to navigate the application process, for example.

That is one example of the work sustainable energy communities do.

I wanted to make a point about district heating but maybe we will get back to that. It is obviously a big player in community heat but I will not go into it in detail now.

The last piece was on the suggestion in the ESRI report. The ESRI came out afterwards to recognise the importance of the retrofit programme. It identified HVO and gas as transition fuels. Our view is HVO is an extremely valuable and useful resource for our energy transition. We just feel, on the basis of a number of factors, that it needs to be directed at the moment towards transport - that is obviously a policy decision - where it is blended at the fuel pump and you drive in and get a regulated and tracked reduction in emissions associated with that fuel. There are concerns around the ability to switch back to a fossil fuel if it goes into individual boilers in homes. The biggest concern is HVO, for what we need in this country, will still require imports. It does not give us security against price volatility in imported fossil fuels. Our national heat study took a big look at the best solutions for building space and water heat. It is the marriage of district heating and heat pumps, in the main.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. Mr. Byrne mentioned the action plan to reduce waiting times and said it will be submitted shortly. Will that be within the next few weeks or months?

I would aim towards the next few weeks. Part of the delay in the action plan thus far is we are busy closing out a significant framework tender of €1 billion-plus.

There is a structural flaw in the SEAI in that it relies on grants rather than public provision. Those with savings or access to loans benefit more than others and poorer people are locked out. Mr. Byrne mentioned the SEAI is preparing for its biggest year ever in retrofits this year, with a target of 73,000. What measures are being taken for those people who feel locked out from retrofitting? I met with representatives of EnergyCloud recently. They said the Government could target batteries, immersion controllers, heat pumps and cladding with minimal red tape, which they said would help those in energy poverty. What would the witnesses say to that?

Dr. Byrne spoke of the 100% grant that is now available to people at risk of energy poverty for attic and wall insulation.

That is a huge improvement.

Absolutely. They can apply for that directly and do not have to wait. They do not lose their spot on the waiting list for the warmer homes scheme. Dr. Byrne will give some of the details of that.

In a weird way it leans into Ms McCarthy's question. We are driving the ship as fast as we can and have to look at all parts. With the low-cost loans, for example, we are pushing hard. The Chairman mentioned the increase in loans. People may not like loans but a number of credit unions are participating in the low-cost loan scheme. The loan can be as low as €5,000 and go up as far as €75,000, with interest rates more or less half of the standard interest rate in the marketplace.

The second thing is the grants. The Minister has recognised this. We are trimming our sails always and will continue to do so right to the end, including the fuel-poor additional medium cavity grant and things like that. Not all but many contractors now provide customers with a net-of-grant situation whereby the homeowner does not have to pay the full ticket upfront and then claim it back. We are looking at that as well.

Those are some of the measures we are trying to support to activate different sections of the market. We are looking at policy and research as well and seeing what more we can do. It is not either-or; it is how we can develop everything.

How does Ireland compare with our peers in Europe?

The Deputy might not like this answer but many of our peers in Europe are coming to Ireland to look and learn because of the scale of ambition in what we are doing. We are doing it at a State and Government level. A lot of jurisdictions in Europe are doing it at a local authority and municipality level. There are a range of programmes in Europe - from good and bad ones to high, low and otherwise. At a national level, the relative proportions of what we are trying to do are up at the top of the pile in Europe.

A good example of that is we worked closely with colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in England. That department recently launched its warm homes programme, which sounds very similar to our warmer homes programme. We interacted and shared a lot of information in relation to that. At a European level, we all face the same kinds of situations.

Helping hospitals, schools and other State bodies to decarbonise was mentioned. Will the witnesses expand on that? I know about the solar panels in schools plan. Are schools-----

We support the public sector. The large energy users in that sector are health and education. In terms of education, I understand about 50% of schools in the country have been accepted for the programme. Work is commencing there. There are two important aspects to that. One is reducing the cost of energy for schools. The second is education, whereby pupils can see in real time-----

Is that 50% of schools or 50% of schools that applied?

Fifty per cent of schools. We are talking about 4,000 schools in the country and about 2,000 schools have been approved. We are working towards completing the rest of the schools. The funding is there. It is a process we are going through at the moment.

In other parts of the public service, we have started pathfinder programmes working with the likes of the OPW and the HSE to look at their hospitals and buildings and to develop a pathway to making those buildings more energy efficient.

I thank the witnesses for coming in today. I am delighted to hear from Dr. Byrne that we are leading in Europe or that other European countries are coming here to follow our example. We should be proud of that. The SEAI plays an important role here. We are trying to understand how we can do better and push the Government to invest even more in this. There are lots of good things happening and we would like to see more of it.

One thing comes to mind this week. I understand much of the SEAI's budget comes from the carbon tax. A delay was voted through yesterday to a planned increase in that tax. Has the SEAI run the numbers on that? I believe this additional amount in carbon tax was already allocated as part of the budget for this year. Has it run the numbers on how it might impact the organisation?

Obviously, we saw that as well. As I understand it, it is a deferral in the increase in the carbon tax until the budget. We are fully funded this year. We work with our Department and expect our Department will be very involved in pushing for funding for future years. I am not sure we can say much more about it than that.

We are aware of the announcement earlier this week. The work the SEAI does is usually supported. The national retrofit plan has cross-party support - it certainly did when it was pushed through a number of years back. Anything we hear from the system is really supportive of the work we do. Our parent Department is supportive in the context of 2026 and we are planning for 2027. The work we do is a pipeline of work. Applications we are taking now are for 2027 as well. Our plan and anticipation is for continued growth.

Is the SEAI aware how much of its budget comes directly from the carbon tax? Does it have any figures on that?

That would be a matter for our parent Department. We receive the money and have a good indication. It is the majority of the warmer homes budget. We referenced the €245 million earlier, which was the 2025 spend. That has gone up to €320 million or so this year. Most of it comes from the carbon tax, but it must be remembered that was the increase in the carbon tax that was deferred. There is still a significant aspect that comes from it.

Absolutely. I am just wondering whether there are any numbers on what that deferral might cost but if it is the Department that has numbers, that is fine.

More broadly, we get people coming to us and saying that sometimes, when it comes to contractors, quite a rigid approach is taken, where a contractor doing work on a retrofit has to be approved by the SEAI, that it can favour larger builders, and it can be difficult for small contractors to comply with the regulations that are there. I do not know whether there are possibly more flexible approaches taken with other schemes, the vacant property refurbishment grant being one of them. Do the witnesses have a view on that? Could they make things, or want to see things, that are more flexible or are they are happy with how things are?

We are always trying to improve our customer journey and to make things more accessible and more easy to access. It is a big investment for homeowners to invest in upgrading. It is a very significant investment. From our point of view, we want to make sure that the right contractors are there and the quality of the work is up to scratch.

I hear what the Deputy is saying about trying to be flexible, but there is a "but" coming. We resourced up on the supply chain piece. We have thousands of contractors across the various programmes and by and large we have made it even easier. We have gone out and spoken to contractors who are on the schemes and not on the schemes. We asked what caused them to stay on or come off them, etc. There is almost a certain kind of fear about getting on the schemes from the people who are not on them but by and large, when contractors register with us, they need to be tax compliant, they need to have insurance in place and they need to be competent to do the measure they are proposing to do for the homeowner. That is really the long and the short of it.

The better energy homes scheme is a very good example. We have over 1,400 contractors on that scheme. We have a distribution of how many people do works and some come on and come off. It is relatively straightforward to get on and get registered on a scheme. We regularly say to contractors to just get registered. They can do that instantly via the website. They are then provided with relevant documentation, attend an onboarding seminar and away they go. We then monitor for quality. While we are making it flexible and trying to make it easy, there is a point. We are spending State money and going into people's homes. We did 58,000 homes last year. Unfortunately, we see and we hear of some horror stories that happen, so it is important we keep that standard right.

I compliment the SEAI on the work it is doing. There is an ambitious plan there for retrofitting. It is important that we remain committed to it and ensure we bring those energy efficiencies about. I recognise the fact that the SEAI is trying to bring processes of efficiency to its own operation, but will the witnesses explain why it needs four offices?

We have offices in Dublin, Cork, Dundalk and Sligo. The office in Sligo has seven to ten people, the office in Dundalk has about 20 and then we have more, probably 30 to 40, in Cork and 190 or 200 in Dublin. There are a variety of reasons. The Dundalk office is a legacy situation from the decentralisation that was due to happen a number of years ago. By and large, that is how we access talent. From an SEAI perspective, in Dublin we get to a point where we have a lot of staff and we hire staff. In the past, when we went to different parts of the country, we found we were able to access better talent than we could in Dublin. When we originally formed from an organisation in 2002, our statistics section was based down in Cork city. That came out of Enterprise Ireland so there is a kind of legacy issue there. With the market constraints over the last years it has been about accessing talent and previous governments pointed towards decentralisation. Our offices are appropriately sized for the staff we have. They go through full procurement processes. We work with the OPW in getting leases in place-----

I just feel there is the whole western seaboard and across the midlands from Sligo to Cork that is left totally exposed. That is just a point to make. From an efficiency perspective, the SEAI might consider a merger. From a satisfaction-----

We have an office in Cork.

From Cork to Limerick there is nothing.

Okay-----

Dundalk and Dublin are on the eastern seaboard but there is nothing in between.

We have Sligo as well. From our perspective we have-----

If there were one office in the midlands, the SEAI could cover the entire country.

From a perspective of feedback and satisfaction from individuals or households that take this step, does anyone ever want to revert back to the likes of turf or solid fuel?

Very few. I would not say nobody but I would say very few people. When people can afford to, and when they get access to these works, they are very happy with the comfort, the warmth and the health benefits. We often find, such as in reports that came out from ESRI a number of weeks back, that people look at their friends and family. That is where most of our work comes from. We did 58,000 last year and have a projection to 73,000. That level of increase comes from people's experiences and referencing their friends and family. It is really important to understand that. It certainly allows us to talk about increases such as we are seeing and trying to achieve. I will ask Dr. Byrne to come in on that point as well.

When the Deputy asked that question, I was smiling internally. He has clearly spent some time in the bog.

I am from Offaly and proud of it.

One of the things we talk about in retrofit, and there is fear at the start of it, is that almost without exception, at the end of the journey it is about the comfort and warmth. That has become universal. Having spent some time in the bog, there is fun and all the rest of it but people have to do that. If we can put a system in place in their home where they do not have to do it any more, very few people will revert back to it. It might be somewhat nostalgic and you love a turf fire in a pub or something like that but, at the homeowner level, when they get to the other end of a retrofit and their home has gone from a G-rated home where they are heating one room in an almost cold home to a fully retrofitted home, it is transformational.

From the SEAI reporting, the scale here has been exceptional, given where we have come from, with the number of staff, the financial budget and the eightfold increase in a matter of a short number of years. I did not, however, get a real sense that we are really driving that community. I know there are a number of initiatives but I would like to see a better reporting of where the tangible benefits actually are and use them as better examples.

One complete void I see is in the whole area of enterprise. Why are local enterprise offices stepping on the SEAI's toes in relation to retrofits and energy efficiency? Why is it not fully the SEAI's responsibility as the main driver of sustainable energy in the country?

From that perspective, we do not mind people stepping on our toes. We want everyone involved. We want help from everyone. The local authorities have a target to retrofit for 2030. We support the local authorities-----

Should the SEAI not have that target? It goes back to the earlier point about the multiple offices. Why have we got multiple organisations in the country rather than having one and having it done in an efficient manner with one sense of governance and oversight?

Often it makes sense, as long as that collaboration piece is leveraged well. It is leveraged well from that perspective with us working with local government. We support the works that are on their housing stock. We work with the approved housing bodies as well.

It is particularly about the enterprise side, where enterprise grants for efficiency are administered by the local enterprise office rather than the SEAI. Surely, there is a contradiction there.

Enterprise Ireland have the enterprise hub where a business can go and get access to the full suite of grants that are available to enterprise-----

If the SEAI are the experts and the leader in the field in Europe, and we then offload or delegate that responsibility to an enterprise hub, it does not make much sense to me.

No. It is quite the opposite in terms of collaboration. When we work with Enterprise Ireland, it has the in to the businesses and we have the expertise. It is about how we pair well and then provide that opportunity for businesses. It is the same when we work with the chambers of commerce. It is about collaboration. Energy is too broad for one organisation. Our role over the last number of years and one of the pillars of our strategy is collaboration. We provide that technical expertise and then we support the likes of Enterprise Ireland and the local enterprise offices to go out and do that work. It is the first time I have had that a question asked of me about why we are collaborating and why we are not just doing this alone as opposed to collaborating. I do understand why the question is being asked, but we see ourselves as multiplying our work through these other actors and we have an excellent relationship with them. We will continue on with that.

Sorry now-----

I will let the Deputy back in.

Okay.

I thank the witnesses. It is good to see SEAI witnesses again. I know the work has intensified since our last engagement.

I will follow up on a few of the areas I previously discussed with them. One area was in relation to the warmer homes scheme.

Mr. Byrne signalled in his opening statement that we have a warmer homes waiting list. I am concerned at the fact that it is still waiting listed given that it is a scheme for the most vulnerable persons who are willing to get on board. We are not trying to incentivise a market. These are places where the keys are available. The budget is now very substantial, at just over €900 million. What proportion of it is going to the warmer homes scheme and the community energy schemes? I am particularly interested in the warmer homes scheme. How do we move past the situation of having a waiting list? Can that be accelerated given that it is for the most vulnerable and given the current context?

We referenced this earlier as well. Our budget this year is €340 million for the warmer homes scheme, which is about two thirds of our home retrofit budget for the year. We are targeting 11,500 this year, which is a very significant number of homes delivered per day. We are very focused on delivering that but in the meantime we have this waiting list for reasons that we all understand. We are preparing an action plan to tackle that waiting list. We talked about that earlier. I will invite Dr. Byrne to comment.

I thank the Senator for her question. As Mr. Byrne has just said, we have €340 million for the warmer homes scheme and another €62 million going into the community energy grant scheme. To provide some context, we had a budget and plan for about 7,400 homes last year but delivered 8,139. This year alone we have a 40% uplift on the activity, just to keep the day job going and then we have to pivot and see how we can start tackling the waiting list as well. There are lots of moving parts in that. To go back to the earlier part of the discussion, we are about to close out on a €1.2 billion framework agreement to bring more contractors on to the warmer homes scheme. We are in the process of transitioning away from a managing agent partner to a different one so that we can generate more speed and efficiencies along the pipeline of warmer homes.

On that, something we discussed two years ago was the idea of the in-house capacity. The SEAI is working with a suite of contractors and companies but the State is going to be needing retrofitting done for some time to come. I will move on to the public buildings in a moment but is there scope for a more direct role rather than this suite of multiple little contractors? We are losing out there, even in terms of costs. There is a different profit level that is required and so forth. I am referring to that idea of secure employment for a wider range of persons in delivering retrofitting by the State.

That one is outside my brief. Our job is to deliver 11,500 homes this year and to develop out the plans, as Mr. Byrne said. The Senator is asking a great question but it is outside the scope of-----

It is not quite a State construction company but a State retrofitting company. That would allow for secure employment and predictability rather than the vagaries of the-----

Absolutely, but ultimately that is a policy matter. The model we have here in Ireland is similar to the model in Europe.

On the question of public buildings and new public buildings that are coming on stream, retrofit commissioning was discussed previously. Public buildings seem to be competing to access the climate and nature fund and other funds. Again, it is about not having to make a business case or to have to compete. This is not about lifestyle changes. This is about net reductions in our emissions. We need to come at it from that perspective and the possibility of massive fines. In respect of the SEAI's budget, even though it seems high, it is low in the context of the fines that are potentially coming in the not too distant future. Is there scope for an acceleration in relation to public buildings? Is sufficient energy efficiency action being taken in relation to new public buildings and projects that are coming through the NDP?

I will comment on that briefly and then hand over to my colleagues. As the Senator knows, there are huge numbers of public buildings between education, health and so on. We are very active in the task force on public buildings. Indeed, we chair that particular subgroup. We know the challenges that are there and they are huge in terms of funding. That task force is working through the details of all of that and coming up with a strategy on how best to tackle public buildings. Do we do relatively shallow retrofits across a large number of buildings or do we take the worst-performing ones and do a deeper retrofit on them? These are big policy issues that have to be tackled. We are involved in the discussions on those-----

It seems to me that the discussion has not moved on as much as it should have.

Yes, but in the meantime we are involved, obviously, on an annual basis with the pathfinder programmes which are around building the capacity and showing the exemplars of how this can best be done, piloting projects-----

I was just going to say that this is exactly the discussion we had two years ago. Everything was constantly being piloted and we were discussing how we take things to scale. I have one more-----

.

I will come back to you for the second round Senator. You are over time and we have two more speakers in the first round. Deputy Ó Cearúil is next.

I commend and thank the SEAI for the work it is doing, particularly Ms Sarah O'Neill and the public affairs team. Any time I have reached out with particular issues they have been extremely helpful and I just wanted to thank them for that. The number of questions coming in to my office shows the level of uptake, particularly in Kildare.

The climate action plan targets 500,000 homes to be retrofitted to BER B2 rating and 400,000 homes to have heat pump installations. The ESRI was before this committee two weeks ago and told us that, in its analysis, we are off track in terms of those 2030 targets. What installation rate would we need to sustain? Mention was made of 8,000 warmer homes retrofits last year. What is the installation rate to reach the targets by 2030?

We all saw that ESRI report. We are very focused on delivery. Our mandate is to deliver so our total focus is on delivery. We are delivering roughly 300 homes per day. We have a lot more work to do. When I say deliver, we directly deliver on the warmer homes scheme but we do not directly deliver on the better energy and the other schemes. They require people to want to do them and it is a big investment for people. We are in the business of encouraging through promotion, advertising and so on. For example, we took a course correction in January, which the Minister announced. A lot of work went into that over the past year in terms of preparing for that course correction. When we see a lack of momentum or a stalling, we work to get the momentum going again. We are seeing that now, directly, in the numbers that are coming through, even in the first four months of this year.

Just to come back to the initial question, with all due respect. There were 8,000 done under the warmer homes scheme last year. Should that be ramped up? Mr. Byrne mentioned 11,000 for 2026.

It is 11,500.

What should we be at? Should we be at 15,000, for example, and what are the impediments? What is stopping us from being able to actually achieve that overall figure?

It depends on the number of applications in any year. In the past number of years, there have been more applications because of the opening up of the eligibility for the warmer homes scheme. We have worked hard to ramp up our contractor base and our delivery. We are doing that and are stepping up by 40% this year. However, that is probably still not enough to tackle the waiting list that is there. We have work to do and Dr. Byrne has talked about-----

Does Mr. Byrne have a number in his head such that if they are in the hopper for this year and next year, we will get to our 2030 targets? Does he have that figure? That is the question I am asking.

Dr. Byrne can tell us what our application rate is at the moment.

Last year we got around 10,000 applications or between 1,000 and 1,200 per month. That was for the warmer homes scheme. To the Deputy's question, the target is broken into two parts, under the first and second carbon budgets. For clarity, while 500,000 is the number for B2s, the actual name of the game is carbon emissions reductions. The friendly, front face that people can understand is the B2 side of it. In the first carbon budget period, we had a target of the equivalent of 120,000 dwellings retrofitted to B2 or cost optimal. We achieved somewhere in the region of 85,000 B2s. When we add in the cost optimal piece, which is dwellings that could not achieve B2 but which have had a significant uplift, we would have made the B2 target for the first part of it. We are definitely behind on the heat pumps, unfortunately. The target for the first carbon budget period was 45,000 but we only delivered about 20,000. The carbon budget periods were framed so that there were relatively lower targets in the first period and then they ramped up.

On the flight path, we need about 75,000 B2s a year on average. If we over-deliver, then we will need less towards the end. That is what B2s are. We needed about 380,000 heat pumps. We need about 40,000 heat pumps a year as well.

On the warmer homes scheme we have a waiting list at the moment. Part of the plan was to establish over what period we can bring that waiting list down. We see that on the residential retrofit plan, for the NDP funding out to 2030, fully half the budget will be allocated to energy poverty.

I thank Dr. Byrne. I have one last question in this round. I worked out roughly, and Dr. Byrne might correct me if I am wrong, that the capital spend last year and the number of homes that went through the warmer homes scheme, which was 8,000, roughly equates to €30,750 per house. That is back of the envelope maths by me. From Dr. Byrne’s perspective, is there value there? Could there be more cost savings? Is there any wastage there he has identified whereby we could try to bring that cost down even to €25,000 so that we could scale-up even further?

That is a really good question. If I may put it in this context: we were asked earlier about the number of B2s. It is about the deeper you go in homes. If you start off with a G-rated home, the cost to get that home right up to a B2 rating could be very significant. The cost to get that G-rated home to a C2, which is a reasonable standard, might be a significant amount less. If we have a certain quantum of money available to us, which this year is €340 million, there is a question of how you deploy that. If you want to go deeper and deeper in homes, you will necessarily have fewer homes. If you want to take a slightly shallower approach, you will be able to treat more homes but maybe not to the same depth, so you are balancing those two out.

Thank you. I have some questions. There was mention of the national heat strategy, which was done in 2022. Are there plans to update that? As technology is changing, are there plans to produce something new there?

We have a range of research under way. The most relevant, although it is not a direct national heat study, is where Ireland has to submit its comprehensive heating and cooling assessment to the EU, which will then feed in to the next national energy and climate plan. That is due for submission shortly. The SEAI has been helping the Department to do the analysis for the modelling behind that. Of course, each year we do the energy projections modelling as well, which is a complete look at what are the current policies and measures that are in play and what are those that are planned to address any gaps to target. In that, we take into consideration technology changes and how implementation is going.

On the warmer homes scheme, what kind of typical or average cost to the SEAI are we talking about? Then there is payback. I know it can be difficult, but when the SEAI does a typical house in the warmer homes scheme, what kind of average cost is it working towards? How does it calculate the payback? What sort of timeframe does it see it paying back in its analysis?

The average cost is broken out over three streams. We have a shallow retrofit, a deep retrofit and a deep retrofit where the heating system has been changed. We were just saying to the previous Deputy that the average cost is around €29,500 or €30,000 per home across all three streams. It varies quite significantly. The average cost in a deep retrofit home with heating is about €50,000 where an average shallow retrofit home is about €8,000. We do not calculate or look at the payback per se because payback is nebulous. If the Cathaoirleach and I occupy the exact same home right beside each other and have the same level of retrofit, the payback is completely different because I have my home relatively cool and he runs his like a sauna. That is where payback comes in so we do not calculate it. A lot of it is down to consumer behaviour and the costing of the homes. We certainly look at the cost on average across the scheme.

So the SEAI does not. Taking that to its conclusion, the ESRI criticism was gritty enough when it was in here. One criticism was the savings in heat do not necessarily translate.

We would say the benefits happen immediately. Immediately you get the benefit of the warmer home, the more comfortable and healthier home. That is critical; that is why people do this. I do not think people do it as a long-term investment to see a payback over time. I think that-----

I am not saying they do but from a Government perspective and a public funding perspective, it should be looked at.

The warmer home scheme, absolutely, which is fully funded. Again, why are we doing that? We are doing it to make people warmer in their homes, to have healthier homes than they currently have and to improve the overall health. We did a study on that some years ago where we looked at the health benefits. Does Ms McCarthy have the information?

The health and well-being project looked at the health benefits in terms of respiratory diseases and mental well-being. That is on the broader impacts. We also report annually on jobs pipeline, private investment leverage and particularly on carbon savings. Our most recent report, which we published on impacts in relation to that, looked at the evolution of the methodologies that are used. We are in constant practice of trying to get real-time information from the installations that have been installed already. That is a body of work that will keep going and will, in turn, inform any changes around the evaluation of what kind of carbon savings are being realised.

Therefore when it comes to the ESRI’s position that the position is not as clear in terms of the benefits, the SEAI does not accept that.

No. To build out on the warmth and well-being study, we partnered up with the Department of Health and the school of tropical medicine hygiene. We looked at people who had a respiratory illness, COPD, and across all the standardised social health metrics, we saw statistically significant increases in performance in terms of wellness, people’s GP visits, medicine and psychological and social health – all that kind of stuff. They are practically impossible to quantify – not totally because they can be done. There have been studies in the UK where they have quantified that in the NHS and how much it is actually worth. In New Zealand, they also have quantified some of that in terms of the financial benefit of doing a warmer home above and beyond the saving on fuel costs in pure cash.

On the ESRI study, first of all it was a desk-based study and it is also important to understand it finished in 2024. The 2025 information is available, as is the 2026 information, so there is an issue of the completeness of it.

On payback, as my colleagues have demonstrated, we look at it from multiple lenses. In the first instance, the programme is taking people out of fuel poverty. From an experiential perspective, it is a programme where we get thank you letters from people saying they do not have to sit in their front room in their dressing gown any more to keep themselves warm.

The other thing mentioned earlier is that it also reduces emissions. That is important for the piece around fines post 2030. Fines are not just about if a country does or does not meet it targets but also about how far away it is from the target, so there is also an investment from that perspective. Therefore payback is multilayered. If you want to put a lens over retrofit, there is a whole host of benefits in the context of improving a home including warmth, comfort and health. It is important from our perspective. We have to generate interest from citizens and we have to demonstrate those benefits to them.

Did Ms McCarthy wish to say something?

As Mr. Walsh, Dr. Byrne and Mr. Byrne have all pointed out, there are benefits of energy efficiency in the home but also in respect of a huge amount of the work we have put into supporting the Government around “reduce your use”. There are homes where they were heating one room and possibly using a secondary fuel as well, which may not have been counted towards their energy use in the first place. They now have the comfort of heating their home and not having frozen curtains and that type of thing. Then there are others where there are behaviours societally that we are trying to help support around evidence and campaigns such as trying to reduce your thermostat to where it is comfortable and good for your health and well-being. All that practice is a really important part in that once the job of retrofitting and improving your home is done, that continues into your practice within the home. We have been playing a role through our communities and through our marketing campaigns on that.

If could add, the programme is funded by the carbon tax, which is a redistribution. It is a tax on fossil fuels. It is reducing our dependence on fossil fuels by reducing the amount of energy we are using and goes directly to those in fuel poverty as well.

I do not dispute any of that.

I know. It is just important for us to try to demonstrate the benefits to the committee.

One hundred percent. Thank you. We are now on round two. I will give Deputy Heneghan five minutes on round two because he is just in, to be followed by Deputy Whitmore.

I thank all the witnesses for coming in; it is good to see some familiar faces. I will bring up a few things that have been relayed to me by the public and people who have gone through the grants. For ordinary homeowners, the real barrier is still cash upfront. I know it has been addressed. The scheme requires people to complete works and pay the contractor and only then can they claim the grant. According to an email I got, compared to someone down the road who got new windows and doors, the grant is only payable when there were already good levels of attic and wall insulation. The email asked me to ask whether it is true that the scheme still works best for households that already have savings while lower and middle-class families are being left behind. Could the SEAI make a statement on that?

It is a big investment for homeowners unless it is the free scheme, that is, the warmer homes scheme. For people who are investing themselves, it is a big investment and cash upfront is an issue. As Dr. Byrne noted earlier, a lot of contractors now will actually do that work net of the payment and the homeowner pays the balance to the contractor. Not all contractors will do that and we cannot require them to do so because otherwise we might leave people out of the contract base but some contractors will do that so it is worth checking around perhaps. We have the one-stop shop, which is the kind of Rolls Royce, and we also have all of the different elements of a journey to go towards making one's house more comfortable and affordable - all of those very positive benefits we talked about earlier. The grants for attic insulation and cavity wall insulation are very substantial for those.

I am very supportive of it. I promoted and I am very supportive of the SEAI grants. They do make a difference. There is a broad range of economic backgrounds in my constituency and those applying for it have different experiences. Has the SEAI published or could it publish the average out-of-pocket cost faced by households after grant aid for the most common upgrades such as attics and cavity walls, heat pumps and deep retrofit broken down by dwelling type and income band? Would that be possible or has it already been done?

It has been done but we need to update it because things change. I believe the latest version of that which is available on the website comes from about December 2024, so we have to get round to doing that again.

Does Dr. Byrne know how many households have started the process or get approved and then drop just before completion because they cannot carry the upfront cost?

We cannot say why they might drop out. On completion rates, there are various reasons but typically, we are talking about an 80% completion rate across the "can pay" schemes. A large number of contractors will do the work net of grant and we facilitate that so instead of people putting in their details, they put in the contractor's details. We have not been in the position to mandate that.

I commend it, especially the recent package. It has definitely been well received in north Dublin across the board. People are really happy to see that much money that can be availed of and improve their current home so I commend the work the SEAI has done on that. I was in my office listening in and the topic of electric vehicles, EVs, arose. I see the SEAI is still offering grants. Should there be guaranteed flexible Exchequer funds to meet the increased demand, particularly at the moment when we see how much it is needed? The current charging system across Ireland needs to be more adequate and decentralised. How many EV grant applications have been delayed, refused or paused in the past 12 to 24 months due to funding constraints or administrative backlog?

Regarding how many EV grants have been delayed, the answer is none. In terms of people backing away from deciding they want to do it and then-----

I will send Mr. Walsh the details of the particular case off the record. Would SEAI would like to see more Exchequer funding going into EV grants and if so, what targeted measures would benefit the Irish people the most?

These are very much policy matters for the Department of Transport, with which we work. The cost of EVs has dropped dramatically in the past number of years given that there are more players in the market and there are a lot of cars coming from different places now. In 2025, they hit cost parity with internal combustion engine petrol and diesel cars. We have also seen the second-hand market appear. I referenced earlier how a three-year-old electric vehicle was now cheaper than a three-year-old diesel vehicle. A grant is generally a subsidy to support people to take action they may not have otherwise taken. There has been a strong uptake of EVs and the technology really stands up, particularly the overcoming of some of the hurdles like range anxiety. With regard to charging, SEAI does the residential element and about 80% of EV charging is done at home because it is the most cost-effective way. We support the Department of Transport and Transport Infrastructure Ireland through the levy programme but that is their area.

Are there any big delays with regard to installing home EV charging that SEAI would like to see changed at a policy level because some people cannot install it? Private wires could help.

Private wires will be of major assistance. I know the Deputy has supported that particular legislation. That is going to be supportive in terms of local authorities but also people being able to kind of charge and develop solutions. Technology is fantastic. When there is a problem, the application of technology can solve a lot of it. Sometimes regulation prohibits technology but private wires are certainly something we recognise would help that matter.

I omitted to congratulate Mr. Byrne on his reappointment earlier. In his priorities for his coming term, he talks about doing even more to help Ireland move away from fossil fuels towards more secure, sustainable renewable sources of energy. That is really important. We need to become a lot more energy resilient. There is a huge waiting time within the funding for SEAI towards retrofitting. It seems that retrofitting is now seen more as a health issue involving making homes more comfortable. I support that but from an emissions reduction perspective and the perspective of making homes more resilient, solar panels are something that SEAI has not focused on. I have raised this a number of times with SEAI. In the context of what is happening globally, does Mr. Byrne think there will be a course correction on the part of SEAI to actually focus more on solar because solar panels are much quicker to install and offer bigger bang for one's buck? We are looking at maybe €8,000 per home. It can actually save people €400 or €500 a year on their energy costs. When we compare it directly with retrofitting, it just seems like a much more efficient way of assisting homes that are at risk of energy poverty. Does Mr. Byrne think SEAI will focus more on solar panels in the coming-----

This is certainly something that has been under discussion and is something we are looking at. We have done some elements of this already.

We do. The solar PV programme is one of the bigger programmes. I think we did about 33,000 solar PV grants last year. The application level this year to date has increased even more than last year so people are turning to solar in significant numbers. Without a doubt, I agree with the Deputy that it would help electricity affordability. We also are looking at batteries and other things like that as to how one combines those. What solar does not do is do anything in terms of decarbonisation because if people are heating their homes through a fossil fuel and they put solar on the roof, they are still heating their homes through a fossil fuel. Solar is a complementary piece to the wider retrofit but we are seeing homeowners pivot towards solar. It is one of our largest schemes. We have done 33,000 and we are doing more this year. We have 500-plus contractors. We have piloted it under the warmer homes scheme and are looking to drive it out at scale in the warmer homes scheme so it is going to be part of the mix.

One of the measures we are calling for is actually putting it under the warmers homes scheme because the people who get those particular benefits such as carers or those with disabilities cannot afford to install solar panels and yet it would make such a difference to them from a financial perspective. There is a decarbonisation piece in this - maybe not at an individual home level but certainly at a national level - and energy security is built into that as well so, I welcome the fact that the SEAI is looking at that as a pilot. I would appreciate it if the SEAI could send me more information on that.

I have another question about the carbon tax. As part of the package announced recently, the Government has delayed the increase in the carbon tax. Have there been any discussions with Government about what that could mean for the SEAI's funding? Has it heard from the Department or the Minister about that yet?

As I said earlier, we are fully funded this year. Given the cross-party support for everything we are doing in terms of retrofits, we suspect we will get even more funding next year. We have not sat down with the Department at this stage. That is an issue for the Department to work through at Government level as to what the budget will be for us next year but we certainly would expect that momentum. We have very significant momentum now and we need to keep that momentum going, which is understood across Government. We are very hopeful that it is not going to impact on us.

Council homes do not appear to be eligible for the solar panels for medically vulnerable people scheme. I have received conflicting responses. Some councils provide solar panels while others do not. The energy company puts them on the householder's roof. I think some council do not allow that if it is a council house.

That is news to me. If a person qualifies as being medically vulnerable then he or she is on the priority services list.

Yes.

We talk to the utility providers. For example, we say Deputy Whitmore is on the list and we talk to the utility provider. Until the Deputy just told me, I had not heard that if you are in a council house, the council may not allow you do it. Typically, we provide grants to rented homes if the landlord approves it and all the rest of it. I am happy to work with the Deputy offline to understand a bit more about that.

I think I got a response from the SEAI that councils were not part of the scheme. I will talk directly to Dr. Byrne about this specific case.

Yes, it is important to do that.

I call Senator Higgins.

Does the SEAI calculate the shadow cost of carbon? I ask as we can get caught up in the energy-rating piece but lose sight of the collective benefit of carbon savings that we need as a State, which sits outside the very strong case for individuals in terms of their houses.

I am glad Deputy Whitmore talked about the solar piece. Similarly, there are other parts of new technologies like battery storage and developing battery storage. The SEAI works with households, businesses and others. The 250 large energy users were spoken about previously. There seems to be this assumption of fossil fuel back-up forever. That still seems to be the framing; the idea that there will always be fossil fuel back-up and that it is factored in. Has a route been charted towards a point where the back-up is not necessarily fossil-fuel based? Do the witnesses know what I mean?

Yes.

If we look to 2040, that is supposedly where we are meant to be-----

Yes.

-----especially if the very large energy users are still relying on it.

On the grants, I think there is €20 million in grants this year and there are a lot of interesting schemes. For those receiving these grants, is there a guarantee that the public will benefit so the SEAI is not necessarily just granting development of technology that might be patented or come out of the route? I am saying this in the context even of things like private wires and that we do not end up with innovation that only serves a small pool of customers but that the innovation that might be supported and funded by the SEAI, and by the State through the SEAI, would be available to benefit the public, the public grid and the public energy transition. I would go further and say it should be available to others internationally because this is an area where we need international co-operation. We need any innovation that works to be taken up as far and wide as possible as part of a global collaborative piece.

The Senator mentioned a couple of things and I will invite my colleagues, Dr. Byrne and Ms McCarthy, to comment on some of those issues.

On carbon, yes, everything we do is towards that ultimate goal of decarbonisation. From what we have seen, even over the past number of weeks, it is really important that we begin to wean ourselves off fossil fuels which ultimately are the main cause of the climate crisis. We keep a very close eye on carbon. The reports that we do, and issue every year, very much breaks down the carbon and our gaps to target that we have as we go forward. Ms McCarthy will comment more on that in a moment.

On new technologies and working with businesses, we do an awful lot of work with businesses large and small. In fact, we held one of our board meetings in Cork last year and we had the great opportunity to visit the very large industry there, Midleton Distillery. We saw the fantastic work that it is doing to decarbonise its processes with the help of the Government, through the SEAI, in terms of the work we do with the company.

On fossil fuel back-up forever, a critical thing we are doing here - Ms McCarthy will talk about this - is the study on the decarbonised electricity system study, which is looking at the year 2050.

The SEAI was commissioned by the Department and the Government to conduct a decarbonised electricity system study to look at the pathways to fully decarbonise our electricity system, the timelines and at what mix of technology should play its part in that. That is currently in play. We hope to read out that study by the end of the year. We have done a huge amount of stakeholder engagement as part of that, including a multi-criteria decision-analysis piece, which has just finished its public consultation on the range and mix of technologies, and what kind of weighting will be used to make decisions. That looks at all things from flexibility to generation to how you store energy from renewables. All of that will be considered in the modelling. I hope that we will report by the end of the year. The study is not the first of its kind in terms of looking at decarbonising the electricity system. We took a very objective look at the full mix of technologies, including what the Senator referenced around innovation. We looked across where technologies are right now and what is the acceptable timeline for them to be up and running at scale.

The Senator asked a question about the broader carbon view of our energy systems. The SEAI reports on our energy statistics, that is, where we use energy, what we use it for and how we fuel it today. The SEAI is also responsible for feeding the energy modelling to the EPA's national projections going to the EU. We report both on how we are travelling against national commitments plus our EU targets. Certainly we look at what are the commitments from heat, transport and electricity, and how are we moving towards them.

On Deputy Whitmore's question, the main impact of the retrofit programme is to look at energy efficiency. It is taken as one of the policies that is already in play in terms of our trajectory towards reaching national targets. Any change in that obviously changes the baseline, in which there already is a gap. When we move our electricity and transport needs into an electrification policy, certainly we increase our electricity demand but net-wise, from a carbon perspective, we are looking at a carbon emissions reduction. The SEAI always looks at it from a whole energy-----

On the electrification of public transport, we have heard the EV piece but it is always the private consumption piece. Is there any intensification or scaling up of that?

That is part of the Department of Transport's remit as opposed to our but, within the projections modelling, there are assumptions there around some it. Is EV uptake for private vehicle use? We still have a growing private vehicle transport emissions issue and challenge in this country. A large part of it is understanding the behaviours, supports and infrastructure that must be in place to move people out of cars and on to public transport, out of transport altogether and to make sure that we have safe infrastructure for people to be actively mobile, such as cycling. We feed that information into the Department of Transport and the Department of Climate, Energy and Communications. The SEAI also runs behavioural studies around what are the things that stop people from availing of public transport.

There is also the electrification of public transport-----

Yes.

-----the scaling up of public transport with new electric vehicles. If you build it, they will come when it comes to something like public transport.

Following on from Senator Higgins's question, are there any EV schemes or incentives for hauliers to convert to electric vehicles in which the SEAI is involved?

It is a Department of Transport issue. We referenced the very valuable resource of HVO and perhaps it should go to transport especially those difficult-to-decarbonise elements of transport. That is a possibility.

There are electric vehicles available for hauliers but the response we always get is they are massively expensive and things like that.

That is a Department of Transport responsibility but off the top of my head, based on my most recent discussion with my counterparts in SEAI in respect of this, there is a pilot scheme, potentially a grant, available. In the SEAI we have for many years worked with haulage companies around efficiency of the current fleet in making sure they minimise the amount of energy they use to do their work. We can come back to the Deputy with more information on what is available through the Department of Transport.

I also have solar power on my mind possibly because there was a Social Democrats motion on it today. I would like to ask about plug-in solar panels. The UK Government is making a move on that at the moment. They will be widely available in shops for people to put on balconies and outdoors and to plug them into a plug in their home like anything else. Does the SEAI have a view on whether we should roll that out here? It seems they are low cost, affordable, easy to install and could make a difference to people in energy costs quite quickly.

I will hand over to Dr. Byrne in a minute. They are widely available in Germany which brought in a multi-layered safety system because of the safety issues involved, limiting the amount because you do not want to burn the wiring in the apartment or wherever and notification to the grid so the grid is aware of what is developing. The UK, as I understand, has piggy-backed on the German learning from that. We have no involvement in it. The safety issues are best dealt with by ESB Networks. I expect they will become available at some point.

We are looking at this stuff as well and things are coming around. Exactly as Mr. Byrne said, technically today plug-in solar is illegal in terms of wiring and safety regulations. We have supported 33,000 solar and PV installations. They are fixed installations done by qualified electricians. This is much more mobile and friendly so it is highly likely we will have to look at it in terms of the requirements. As Mr. Byrne said, the UK has looked at that and has kind of piggy-backing on the German experience in how they might change the wiring regulations and diagrams. As with Mr. Byrne, my sense is they probably will come in here. We checked and you can buy them on the Internet and probably have them delivered tomorrow. Whether we want it or not, it is there. I think it is a good thing in terms of balconies. I think there are a couple of hundred thousand installed in Germany. On grants, that is a whole other piece and much more of a policy piece. What would the grant be? For whom and where would it be? Why would it be there? Right now, the safety piece is that it is probably not the best thing in the world to buy something off the Internet and plug it into your house. It is something that will probably have to be examined relatively quickly.

Within EV grants, was there consideration for an additional, different or separate grant in relation to vehicle to load where you have electric vehicles that can basically reverse and provide energy outwards? When talking about energy security, Storm Éowyn and these kinds of issues, it is a battery on wheels, effectively. Has that been looked at? Some EVs have it and some do not.

Some of the newer vehicles have bi-directional charging while some of the older ones do not. We have not considered it in terms of policy to the best of my understanding.

In rural areas in particular it could be-----

More and more of the newer cars have it. I just changed my EV and the new EV I now have has it. It is an added feature.

I did the same this morning. I looked at the manual. There is a thing called vehicle to load and you can happily buy a cable, if the car has it, from the Internet. It is like a two-pin plug that plugs into the car. That is vehicle to load. In the next level up, vehicle to grid, you are plugging into the electricity system of your house. That is the next step beyond; we are not quite at that point yet. Vehicle to load is basically a cable that plugs in and might run on a two-pin or three-pin socket.

We mentioned earlier there are 750,000 houses on home kerosene and decarbonisation for those houses. Solar panels were mentioned as were batteries. Where are we on batteries for those houses? I am also interested in a heat solution. What is the actual heat decarbonisation solution for those 750,000 from the SEAI's perspective? A lot are in rural areas so they need a solution to get off kerosene. What is the technology solution?

On batteries, we had grant-aided batteries and for various reasons that was ended. We are back looking at it now because technology and safety requirements have moved on. My technical team is looking at how we might go back and what might be required.

Is that to integrate batteries into the solar?

Exactly. We look at it technically. Any grant is a matter for the Minister and the Department and I think that is pretty well accepted. Ms McCarthy gave a great discourse on the solution a moment ago in relation to a heat study. The solution fundamentally is decarbonisation. We are looking at other technologies. A heat pump is the gold standard but it may not be appropriate for all homes. We are currently piloting a high-temperature heat pump. The heat pump as we traditionally know it is a lower temperature-type heating appliance and it needs a lot more insulation around it. The high-temperature heat pump looks to be on the face of it a plug-and-play replacement for a fossil fuel boiler. It is a heat pump but it has the capacity to go to a higher temperature. In a standard wet heating system with a boiler, you hit the boiler, the radiator heats up to 70°C or 75°C - you could nearly fry an egg on it - and the room is temporarily heated. A traditional heat pump system has a much lower heating temperature. The high-temperature heat pump as we are piloting may mean you do not have to change your pipework. You might need lower level of insulation on the house. It is capable of operating as a regular heat pump most of the time. Ms McCarthy may wish to add to that.

Some 50% of our residential heat is still dependent on kerosene. I do not have the number but a certain percentage of that is still urban. We have also done some analysis on the heat pump readiness of those homes and it is quite a high number. There are existing homes that are ready to move to heat pumps. We are trying to figure out how to incentivise and directly connect.

Move from what to heat pump?

From oil-fuelled central heating directly to a heat pump without any further work.

How many heat pumps are there on the residential side at the moment?

Approximately 170,000 broken down into about 120,000 in the new-build sector, about 20,000 we have directly grant aided and we think there is about another 30,000 that were done prior to schemes independently.

It sounds like potentially an older heat pump could be switched out for a high-temperature heat pump. It is a possibility that there is interoperability.

It is to switch out an oil or gas boiler for this high-temperature heat pump.

That would be very good.

It would be a plug-and-play replacement. I do not want to set it up as a silver bullet. Ms McCarthy's team on the behavioural side has done a huge amount of work on why people do or do not and the barriers. We got great information on that. Taking out complexity is a bigger one as is cost. If there is a product where you can take out an oil boiler and put in a high-temperature heat pump, that would certainly transform the game.

As was mentioned earlier, disruption is another issue. This should solve longer-term disruption.

It is easier.

New measures were announced a month or two ago. One of those measures relates to windows and doors. I have represented north Dublin for 20 years. I have met countless people down through the years, especially older folks in older houses, who asked if the local authority or any other body had a scheme through which they could get their windows and doors done as an upgrade option. A scheme of this nature has real potential, even in the form of a set of measures on their own. What is the take-up of either that scheme or the measures in general?

The take-up has been huge. We had about 9,000 applications in March. The scheme opened formally on 2 March. We did put in a retrospection piece, because a very important point is we are going into an existing mature industry where there is an ongoing piece. Some of the grants are gone but when we started to offer grants first there was no industry and it took a long time to build it up. We are going into a mature, active industry. We did a small bit of retrospection. We had 9,000 applications or thereabouts in March. With any new measure, you will always get a bump or a bubble. It has come down a little, but we are still seeing a significant uplift in the number of applications for windows and doors.

That is good. I will make one final point. Going back to what Deputy Whitmore said in terms of the target for warmer homes, what Dr. Byrne said is that he is really throwing resources at it on the way in and trying to get more done. He should be setting a key performance indicator regarding how long a resident will have to wait for the various stages. He should try to set that out, tell the punters and try and meet that target. I understand that his approach is to throw resources at it on the way in and to try and get more done, but someone who is waiting for a scheme really needs the certainty of knowing they are going to get it done, that they will get there in 16 months or 18 months and that is the target the SEAI is working towards and that it is hitting the target. He should really consider that.

That is something we are looking towards within the stages that we have. We have to do a bit more work before we can get to that. It is an aspiration. We do want to get there but not at a general scheme level. We regularly report to Deputies on general schemes. When you have a homeowner in front of you in the clinic, they do not want to know about the general scheme. They want to know about the application and-----

Exactly, when I go in, how long will I be waiting. That is what people need to know.

Yes. That is the longest part.

A lot of the people who get the warmer homes scheme are quite elderly and some people think they will have to wait two years before they get it and they are left freezing in their homes because they just do not think there is any point.

I appreciate that.

I propose that we publish the opening statement on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed. I thank the witnesses for taking part in the session today on this matter. We will suspend the meeting for two minutes to allow them to depart.