Dáil Éireann Debate, Friday - 16 September 2016
655. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his plans to ensure that cooling energy demand and overheating risk are quantified in Irish building regulations for dwellings, to ensure full compliance with European law, to ensure that new homes are comfortable and energy efficient irrespective of external weather and to reduce the risk of avoidable summer deaths (details supplied). [26185/16]
View answerPart L (Conservation of Fuel and Energy) of the Building Regulations and the accompanying Technical Guidance Document for dwellings specifies the calculation procedure called the Dwelling Energy Assessment Procedure (also known as DEAP) as the methodology to be used to calculate the energy and carbon dioxide emissions performance for dwellings. The DEAP methodology has been designed to be in accordance with the requirements set out in Annex I of Directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings (recast). The DEAP methodology contains an optional overheating module which can be used to estimate the risk of overheating in dwellings.
The DEAP methodology is currently undergoing review. As part of this review, it is also planned to introduce a cooling calculation module into the software to calculate the cooling demand for dwellings.
