Ireland needs to retrofit 150,000 houses a year for a decade if it is to meet its sustainable energy targets, Professor Brendan Halligan, Chairman, Institute of International and European Affairs and of the Sustainable Energy Authority, Ireland, has told the Energy Action Conference on Reframing Fuel Poverty in Europe.

He did not think much further analysis was needed into the problem. They knew the causes of fuel poverty and the solutions. "The first thing to do is come at this with a high degree of impatience, with a certain amount of anger, and with a willingness to offend people. If we go on being polite with each other about this in the public sector we are not really going to get anywhere."

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The SEAI was responsible for the Building Energy Rating system "and we are at the stage now where we have sufficient BER that we can begin to draw conclusions for the whole population of housing stock. We probably have 12% evaluated and it is utterly and absolutely appalling". He added that a "deep retrofit" programme to eliminate fuel poverty and achieve and acceptable energy efficiency for dwellings would probably cost "about €25,000 per average household".

While this was a lot of money it was perfectly clear no one knew how to carry out a national retrofit programme. "I don’t mean the mechanics of doing an individual house” but how to carry out retrofits on a large scale through a Community based approach using industrial techniques. To move it from a cottage industry where you do one-off houses to being able to retrofit hundreds in the same area. We have to jump from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in terms of manufacturing."

(CD)