Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 1 March 2022
150. Deputy Patrick Costello asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications if he will detail the latest launch of retrofitting funding as it primarily relates to houses, the available energy saving schemes for apartment buildings and apartment complexes. [10946/22]
View answerThe Government has approved a package of supports as part of the delivery Ireland’s residential retrofit programme. These measures are aimed at making it easier and more affordable for homeowners to undertake home energy upgrades, for warmer, healthier and more comfortable homes, with lower energy bills and emissions.Included in these measures is the establishment of the new National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme, offering unprecedented grant levels, increased from around 30% to 50% of the cost of a typical B2 home energy upgrade with a heat pump. The new higher grant rates available for relevant measures under the National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme will also be available under the Better Energy Homes Scheme and the Community Energy Grant Scheme.The new National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme introduces a new way to undertake home energy upgrades with SEAI registered one stop shops providing an end-to-end service for homeowners. This includes surveying the home; designing the upgrades; managing the grant process; helping with access to finance; engaging contractors to deliver the work; and quality assuring the work. Homes, built and occupied pre-2011, and owned by private homeowners, non-corporate landlords and Approved Housing Bodies are eligible for the scheme. Individual apartments can receive support across the range of schemes. It is also worth noting that a key feature of the new one stop shop model is that it will bring together groups of homes for aggregated projects thereby creating efficiencies in delivery and developing new innovation in processes and technologies. More broadly, officials of my Department will be working with Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to separately consider the best approach to deal with apartment buildings that are multi-unit buildings with common areas, rather than individual units. This will be examined further in 2022 to consider approaches to support whole building solutions.
