Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 6 May 2021
13. Deputy Jennifer Whitmore asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications if he will provide a schedule of retrofitting to meet the target of 500,000 homes by 2030, by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23317/21]
View answerThe Programme for Government and the Climate Action Plan set ambitious targets to retrofit 500,000 homes to a Building Energy Rating of B2/cost optimal and to install 400,000 heat pumps in existing buildings over the next 10 years. In 2020, SEAI residential and community retrofit schemes supported the upgrading of over 17,600 homes. This included over 3,200 homes upgraded to BER rating of B2 or better. The number of retrofits last year were unfortunately, negatively impacted by COVID-19 related restrictions. We need to ramp up to at least 56,000 B2 retrofits per year by 2024. The development of the national retrofit programme to achieve these targets is well underway. Some €221.5 million in capital funding has been provided this year for SEAI residential and community retrofit programmes. This represents an 82% increase on the 2020 allocation and is the largest amount ever for the schemes. This allocation has facilitated the expansion and improvement of existing SEAI grant schemes and the introduction of new initiatives. The funding has already supported calls for projects under the new National Retrofit (One-Stop-Shop Development) scheme and the Community Energy Grant Scheme as well as a €47 million increase in funding for energy poverty schemes. Further SEAI administered retrofit initiatives will be launched in the coming months. The programme will be implemented through a range of schemes and initiatives, which will be developed and evolve over time, and therefore a county by county annual schedule for the next nine years has not been prepared.
