Ireland’s Retrofit Race — with Dr. Ciarán Byrne (SEAI)

[00:00:00] This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews. [00:00:14] : Welcome to Constructive Voices, where we talk to the people turning big climate goals into real world change. You can feel at home today. We're in Ireland and we're talking retrofits, the upgrades that make your place warmer, cheaper to run and cleaner for the planet. If you've ever battled a cold back bedroom or watched your energy bills. Yo, yo, this one's for you. Our guest is Dr. Ciarán Byrne from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. He cuts through the jargon and shows us what to do first, what actually moves the needle and how to avoid the common mistakes. We'll get into insulation that really works, heat pumps without the headache grants and green finance that make the maths add up, and smart approaches for older heritage homes. You'll hear myths busted, plain English advice you can act on and a simple pathway you can follow whether you're ready for a full upgrade or just one solid step. Alright, let's get into it. Over to you, Jackie. [00:01:16] Jackie De Burca: I'm with Dr. Ciarán Byrne here from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and we've spoken about a year ago, back in 2024, but of course there's so much happening at the moment, Ciarán, that it would be great to sort of have a catch up with you. [00:01:30] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Thanks, Jackie, for having me on. Yeah, and it is pretty timely to have a catch up because, you know, it's a busy space, as you say, and there's a lot going on and obviously a lot more to do as well. So, yeah, delighted to have a chat with you today. [00:01:41] Jackie De Burca: Fantastic. I was having a strange thought this morning as we are from the same genre. I was thinking, imagine if somebody back in the 80s had said to us, you know, let's do a retrofit. We wouldn't have known what that was back then, would we? [00:01:53] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: No, I know, it's funny, I love the way you say genres as if we're kind of film criticism. We're old. I think, Jackie, is what you're trying to say politely. Yeah, I think. Are we millet not possible after boomers, millennials or something like that? [00:02:05] Jackie De Burca: X, apparently. And AI thinks we're brilliant because when I. Well, I've googled it, Gen X of all sorts of interesting things to us. But yeah, so retrofit. My funny thing was, you know, if somebody had thrown out that word back in the 80s, it would have been like, is that something to do with the record or something? [00:02:23] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, you probably would have thought about, you know, the Was it the Boomtown Rats? What the fellows with the tartan trousers, those guys for the big hair and the mustaches, you know, so that's. [00:02:33] Jackie De Burca: Not what retrofitting is at all. For those people who aren't aware, would you like to explain exactly what retrofitting is? [00:02:40] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, it's great. It's a home energy upgrade. So retrofitting is an existing house. And I'm going to talk primarily about the domestic side of things. Houses and apartments, homes. And what we do is a home energy upgrade. So it's increasing the energy performance of a home. And what that basically means is you're insulating it. Most houses have kind of four walls or roof and whatever, doors, windows. You insulate the fabric, external fabric of the house and then you change the kind of underlying heating system which in many cases in Ireland is fossil fuel based, which is oil or gas or sometimes coal or peat, and putting in a renewable heating system such as a heat pump. But we're going into existing homes of which there's approximately 1, what was there, 2.2 million homes, I think, according to the CSO, of which about 1.8 million are occupied, they're already built. And we go into those homes and we try and improve the energy performance of the home or retrofitting them. So that means things like external wall insulation. So, and people listening to the podcast will see this. And if you're walking up and down, I say a suburban street in Dublin or anywhere actually, and you see these really nice, fresh new looking homes, oftentimes they'll be the ones that have the external wall insulation done because it really improves the external appearance of the house. [00:03:46] Jackie De Burca: Yeah, that's a great explanation. So, yeah, I mentioned, I'm recording this from my father's house in Dublin and he's getting a bit of retrofitting done for in his case with the beautiful Georgian windows that will need to be upgraded and make the house more energy efficient. So, you know, it's happening obviously in lots, in lots of places are the targets, you know, are they being successful? Since we last spoke here on about. [00:04:09] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: A year ago, we set up carbon budgets. There's not so much carbon allowed in each sector, but over a five year period. So if anybody wants to dig deeper in this, you'll see that the various carbon budgets, three sectors you have one for transport, one for the residential sector, one for agriculture, one for electricity, et cetera. And over a period of five years, this is the amount of carbon you're allowed to use up. And obviously the whole point of the budget is that they're kind of taxing. There's a bit of target there to get to. And the way the carbon budgets, they're set up in five year blocks. So the first five years takes us out to the end of 2025. The next five year block is from 25 to 2030. So where we're at vis a vis targets on the national retrofit plan, as we kind of kicked the ball into play in around 2019 and then more or less very quickly afterwards, we had Covid for the better part of two years, not certainly slow things off. So it was really around early 2022 that we got going with gusto in terms of retrofitting at scale and we've been doing pretty good work ever since. But the way the targets have been set up, Jackie, is that the first five year block is kind of relatively modest and it's all about getting the processes in place and getting the awareness built up and getting the supply chain built up and things like that so that you're ready to really take off for the second five year block. So it's been back end loaded, I suppose, in terms of the decade. So for last year, full year, last year, 2024, we took in somewhere but just shy 70,000 applications, which is about 4% increase in the previous year, which is good, but possibly not good enough at 420 million euros, which is a 30% year on year increase in capital spend. And we upgraded 54,000 properties, which is a 13% increase on the previous year. The other big target we have in the national residential retrofit plan, it's fundamentally the plan is we're decarbonizing homes. Okay. And what that basically means, go back to my earlier comments that the home, you insulate the home, so you put the wall, attic, roof, doors, windows, et cetera. So whatever energy you're using, you're using less of it because the home is more efficient. And then you replace the fossil fuel heating system with a renewable one. And we want people to broadly bring the house up to a BE rating of a B2. That's what we call cost optimal. That's the place you need to be. And so the target is about reducing carbon. And we're going to do that by retrofitting 500,000 homes up to a BE, your rating of a B2. And last year we did 21,800 of those, which is a 25% increase in the previous year. So we're seeing a very significant increase in BE yours. So what it looks like to be is that we'll probably be there or thereabouts for most of our targets by the end of 2025. But it's going to be very, very interesting and probably quite difficult to scale up to the 26 to 30 targets because they are quite significant. [00:06:41] Jackie De Burca: Right, okay. So I guess from everything I've seen from our previous conversations and researching for today's conversation here on, there's going to be a tough challenge ahead. Straddling our, you know, kind of trying to build it up to the sort of pace that is expected and needed, I suppose. [00:07:00] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, it is. I. Look, nobody said this is going to be easy and in a sense we're doing, we're doing really, when you stand back kind of at a high level look at this. We're trying to really engage effectively 1.8 million homes in the country to do something. And it's very interesting work, Jackie, because, you know, anything and you mentioned your father in a bit of retrofitting and that's a lot of people who are doing that. They're doing a single measure or they're upgrading the attic or they're changing pumping the cavity in walls or whatever it might be. Anything you do in this space is what we call no regrets work. So it's all good. Anything you do to improve the energy efficiency of your home that such that it uses less energy and we move towards decarbonization is good. It's going to be challenging, there's no question about that. But that is the whole nature of the beast in terms of climate action targets right across the board and many of your listeners here will be fully aware of it there. You know, on a day to day basis. They're looking at headline after headline from Asia, from Southern Europe as wildfires, extraordinary temperatures, hottest summer ever. Hottest temperatures, hottest that many of your listeners will have experienced that. In fact, a friend of mine just came back from a stint in Portugal and he said it was heading for 39 degrees, which was, you know, really excessive. So they see the climate change piece now things are changing and people, in fairness to them within their means, are really turning to the retrofit. And we just, we need to encourage them and support them and, you know, cheer them on and provide the right information, provide the right pathways to do even more. And it is going to be challenging. But look, we're up for it. [00:08:18] Jackie De Burca: Absolutely. And I can tell you firsthand that, you know, when I moved to Spain back in 2003, I really didn't think that 22 years later, I would say that it's a relief to come back over now. I don't mean this. I love being back in Ireland. Let it not be said that I'm sort of saying anything about Ireland to the Irish, that I'd be actually relieved to get away because what you mentioned about somebody who was in Portugal, we have had seven relentless weeks in Spain and it's been different the other years. So I have no doubt in my mind I wasn't doubtful before this summer, but now I'm even more convinced of what's happening and how quickly we need to be moving on everything. [00:08:55] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: That's a great point, Jackie. That is a really interesting one. I'm probably part of what we're going to do today and part of my job and to a degree is make that connection for people. So just kind of walk through the steps. You're living in Spain and how it's changed. So somebody turns up in Portugal for my pal, turns up for a couple of weeks, holidays and goes, gosh, it's very, very hot. It was 38 degrees. Well, I might go there again next year or I might choose a different time, whatever it is. But actually it's trying to link that point and say, do you know what? Not that we're causing it. At a humankind level, we are causing it, but in terms of what can you do about it? And sometimes people kind of throw their hands in the air and go, oh, jeez, it's terrible, it's really awful. But I'll keep doing what I'm doing. But actually it's those cumulative impact of all of those smaller changes that people make can have a difference. So that individual might. My pal should be saying, well, you know what? Part of my solution is I can just sit there and read all the newspaper articles and get more and more frustrated and more and more upset about it, or it can do something. And to do something we're trying to encourage people to do is maybe start on your retrofit journey. But if everybody does something, it does improve the way forward. We end up using less fossil fuels, we end up becoming more efficient, we end up putting less carbon dioxide up into the atmosphere, you know, and that has to be better for everybody. [00:10:03] Jackie De Burca: I think. I think it is. It's drilling it down, isn't it? Just pretty much as you've just said, Ciarán, onto like a personal level, it's no longer, oh, there's horrible things happening far away in the world, you know, it's no longer like that. And it's changing so quickly. So if people Just could grasp there are things like my dad is 86. That's why he's not doing a bigger retrofit. You know, he was a younger man, you know, just putting it very bluntly. He doesn't expect to see the benefit of it and that's, that's his situation. But at least he's doing something. So I think fair dues to him and to anybody who starts, as you said already, Ciarán, on their retrofit journey. [00:10:39] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, that's a great point. You raise a number of good things. One thing we were certainly I was writing on last year and it's the kind of found myself in a funny space, climate anxiety. So if you read enough terrible headlines, you start to kind of go, God, where are we heading? One of the things on climate anxiety is this idea of no ability to control it. So, you know, this is all this stuff happening. What can I do? You know, people sit there watching the David Attmer documentary and a polar bear starving to death and you kind of go, what can I do? Well, actually starting to change your behaviors and be that and number of flights you take, or be that how you. What kind of vehicle you drive or how you do public transport or be that retrofit in your home is your contribution to taking control of my climate impact. That's one part of it. The other piece of raise Jack is really interesting about your father being a bit elderly and he's probably not going to do the whole job because understandably you might not see the benefit of it, but it's something we have to tackle front on in the SAI and working with various departmental colleagues. You see the homes still have to be retrofitted. So how best we support people on their journey. When you think about the 1.8 million homes that are occupied all out of census, they're not all the same. So loads of people on different phases of a journey. Do we have a plan or a pathway for different people in different phases? That's what we're trying to build up as well. So it's going to be really interesting to get us there. [00:11:47] Jackie De Burca: That's fascinating. Yeah, no, because I do think that's absolutely it. It's the whole stock, if you like, as you call it, like the housing stock, which will be different types of architecture, different periods, different, you know, as you said, you self care and people at all different stages of their lives. The big question would be how. I mean that is like massively challenging. How can it be embraced because of all of that and lots of people don't necessarily have X amount of tens of thousands up front. I know there's loads of grants like obviously that's not, you know, that's not, not sort of criticism. But people have to put the bill at the beginning really, don't they? [00:12:24] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, I suppose in terms of. I'll come back to the grants for a moment, but you're right about the housing stock and it's quite a variation and obviously anybody in Ireland lately, the biggest ticket in town is live housing and there's a huge focus on new housing and that'll all be built extraordinarily high standards, but everything there's an awful lot of what's currently in place now will still be around in 2050 when we want to be hit net zero. So we have to tackle it. And what we're doing is building kind of what we tend to do is pilot out projects. See how would we tackle certain types and cohorts of houses. For example, we have a traditional home with pilot project going on at the moment. You mentioned there, Jackie, that your dad and house is George and windows and things like that. So that kind of I don't know the house at all, but that kind of says to me that there might be issues around the kind of heritage issues around the house. And so the menu that you'd have for maybe a heritage home might be slightly different than the menu you'd have for a typical semi, semi, semi d from the suburbs. So we're piloting out these schemes to try and look at how do we kind of have a really easily deployable kind of solution for all types of homes. And so all we tend to pilot them out, learn from them and then kind of develop them up into a scheme that we can deploy at scale. So that's the first bit. Second bit then about the grants. Yeah, we have pretty, pretty good grants and they're available and depending on which pathway you take, you don't necessarily have to fund them up front. So the One Stop Shop program, all of the where you do the whole home retrofit in one go, the grant is netted off. So the homeowner only pays the bill net of the grants. They don't have to have the whole lot of money up front. And many of the individual measures, grant providers also offer that service. So the homeowner doesn't have the whole funding up front. But what we are doing is kind of trying to change the game slightly again and it's moving it from an individual transaction with homeowner vis a vis a grant to Moving it on to a more of a pathway type approach. Not everybody has huge amounts of money kicking around and we absolutely understand that. So you want to support people on their journey. And so we're using this point with journey and pathway, any measure, this is all no regrets territory. So if you have money suitable or spare money, this, this year or whatever, this winter, he said, you know what, what do I do? Getting the attic insulated is probably about the cheapest, best thing you could do in the first instance. And that's tick box. Well done. You're in the first part of your journey. If you can do something another bit next year or the year after, that's great too. So we're trying to reprofile and change our schemes who can really help people on that journey. And that's been supported. There's a big new piece of legislation coming in from Europe called a Building Performance Directive. And it's really all about that, getting people onto the pathway and some people can go down the track with one go and more power to them, and some people make 2, 3, 5, 10, 50, whatever length time it takes them, and we can support them along that, you know. [00:14:54] Jackie De Burca: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. Had a lovely conversation, a very interesting conversation with Stephen Barrett of the Irish Green Building Council, specifically about the Energy Performance Buildings Directive. He's very involved in being back and forth with the EU and he's explained actually how Ireland has been used as a bit of an example in a couple of the other countries. [00:15:15] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, Stephen and the team and the Irish Green Building Council are excellent. We have really strong relationship with them and we work very closely with them. And I quite happily they'll tell us if we're doing things right or wrong. And in their view, and we've been very much listening because they're really on top of the, top of the game in terms of what they do and we work closely with them, developing a lot of projects and whatnot. But yeah, we did. The retrofitting program in Ireland is kind of, to a degree, the envy of Europe because of the scale and ambition of the program and how we're trying to set out and do the homes. And when you're talking about that kind of scale that we're talking about and just go back to the point. Currently the target is 500,000 homes to a be your B2 standard, which is about 27% of the housing stock by 2030. So that's really quite ambitious when you're talking about that kind of scale, what you have to do is build out your pathways, delivering that kind of scale. And that's what we're doing at a national level. So there's loads of really good projects right the way around Europe, demonstrator projects and small little municipality projects that are really excellent. We've learned from a lot of them. But they're kind of typically quite small and, you know, lower. Lower kind of scale if you want. So what we're doing, certainly, I've been at a few European continents and people are certainly looking at us and trying to learn from us now, I have to be honest, I think we're doing lots of good stuff. Does not mean there's not scope for improvement and getting more efficient. And it does not mean that that's. Go for listening to some of our colleagues in Europe and borrowing some of their ideas too, because I'm a great man for whatever works best. Let's try it out, you know. [00:16:32] Jackie De Burca: Yeah, definitely. So listen, there's a lot of enthusiasm here in your voice, which is brilliant to hear. But one thing that in my research before our chat today, you know, of course Minister Ryan acknowledged that the government might fall short of the 2030 retrofitting target. From your perspective, Carol, what's actually. [00:16:50] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Well, I suppose we have targets, we have clear deliverables, and we have a really strong delivery output in our section. And we're really focused on that. But to some degree, we don't really focus on that too much because all we want to make sure is that as many speed bumps, as I call them, are removed as possible. And so, you know, the first point of call is making when you think about the journey. Homeowners have to make the decision to do something, right? Think about your listeners just to maybe envisage for the moment and we call it a customer journey from the start to the end. And start being like, decide to do something at the end being, I've got the measure in place and it's all paid and delivered and whatnot. Okay, Somebody has to decide to do something, right? So we have to do a piece of work around supporting them and understanding what can you do? How do you do it? Where are you at now? What are the kind of things you might do? We have a demand generation campaign and the guys in marketing tell me about the funnel. And depending on when this podcast is going out, people might hear it. It's all about getting the grant. Just saying, hey, by the way, there's a grant out there. So the idea is somebody gets hooked to the top of the funnel as, jeez, it's a grant. Okay. I'm living in a house, you know, it's a bit cold now. It has been a bit cold last winter. And, you know, I know I need to do something. Not quite sure what. We have really comprehensive information on the website. We've links to all of the contractors. So you're getting people into the zone of doing something. The first step is people need to take action. And we really encourage people to take action, all action. Just think about John and Mary sitting on their sofa of a Friday evening and county leash going, what are we going to do? Right, we get on the website, we look at a be your. We got a be your done. We look at that, we get on the website, we know what we think we need to do. We need to get a contractor. Great. So we then have to have contractors, registered contractors with the ability and competence to do the job that the homeowner wants them to do. If you have a pile of contractors are all trained and ready to roll and there's no homeowners deciding to do anything, you have a problem. So it's about getting those two pieces balanced up and then making the pathway as easy as possible. And you know, you're, you're back into this kind of, you know, this whole area of. When I talk about customer journey and pain points, the less complexity in the pathway, the easier it is to do. The less clicks and things you have to upload and download, the easier it is for people to get through that, to get the grant money and then making sure the grant money is at appropriate level that supports them on their journey. So there's a couple of distinct phases in that there's no real single individual blocker. It's about having all the components as good as they can be and it's a constant job. So when you think you're doing okay, then you go back at it and you say, can we make it better? Can we make it better? Can we make it quicker? Can we take out less complexity? Can we give better information to the homeowners about certain measures? They're the kind of things we're doing okay. [00:19:17] Jackie De Burca: And again, because I'm in sort of the privileged position of having a little bit of, you know, first, secondhand, because of my father's experience and he certainly had quick response on the grant side of things and I think he was very happy about that. And when he was. I'm not going to mention names now, but when he was shopping around and getting quotes, there was one company that you do have listed on the website and the other wasn't listed on site. So, of course I encouraged him. He's not a man who turns on a computer. So I had to look at those things for. And I explained the situation to them. I said, look, if it's recommended by the seai, well, that'll be the company to go with. So I think that's kind of like quite clear, you know, in terms of anybody starting their journey. I think that that side of it works quite well, actually. [00:20:01] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah. So just on some of the schemes, one of the ones we have, the Better Energy Home scheme, is where people are doing the individual measures. That's extraordinarily popular. And like the turnaround, the application is virtually instantaneous. So we just have to know, like the mprn, which is the meter point reference number, which people have in our bills, and effectively all we check is, you know, is a home existence and have we paid that grant before in that home? And it's almost instantaneous in terms of the approval process, which is brilliant. And I've heard a lot of people say that on the contractor piece, we don't, for obvious reasons, we don't recommend individual contacts. But what we do, we have a register of contractors and if a contract is coming to look and say, I want to register with the sei, we just check to have the tax insurance, which are mandatory requirements, and that they're competent to deliver the measure they're setting out to do. So if they're an installation provider, have you got the confidence levels, the qualifications to deliver the installation the right way? We would always suggest that people use contractors off the approved list. People aren't mandated to do so. But unfortunately, at my job I get to see some of the other side of the fence where contracts come in or jobs are done for homeowners not at the right standard. Maybe some corners were caught or some of the technical standards weren't followed the way they should have been. And that's between the homeowner and the contractors. There's no recourse, really. Conductors, in our scheme, they are subject to fairly regular inspection in terms of. There's a lot of inspections taken out. Contacts are randomly taken out for inspection. There's orders, there's reworks, there's standards. You have toolbox talks, you keep the standards up. So, you know, that's why I always encourage people to go for contractors off the register for that reason, of course. [00:21:26] Jackie De Burca: I looked at the reviews of the two companies and the one that happened to be on your register was much more sound looking in terms of the reviews. Online. Is that something that you might consider doing, actually having reviews as part of the register, though? [00:21:40] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Well, I think we have to be a little bit careful about that. And you can understand that just from a legalistic point of view. You know, there's a whole other piece. But look what you're really pointing to there, Jack. And something I would totally endorse and encourage the old, the old, you know, caveat emptor, buyer beware. And I'm a firm believer, whether it's retrofit or whether you're buying a new car, whether you're buying a washing machine or whatever it might be, shop around, right? And you know, it sounds kind of almost like silly information, but get three quotes for work. I'm in a very privileged position of a house here in Dublin and I've done works along the way. I would regularly try and get three or four quotes and I've seen extraordinary stuff in some of my journeys. Right. And not, not on the retro side, but on the other side as well. And to always get two or three quotes if you can speak to somebody who's had that company. And I know in my own area, if somebody comes in and they've had a great experience and it could be with a Redfit company, could be with a carpenter, a plumber, whatever it might be, neighbors will talk to each other and I can see that such and such came to your house, did a great job and all of that. That's a great piece of assurance. The other point is have a good noodle in our website because we have kind of a document, we have little kind of cheat sheets and things like that for homeowners, say, well, this is what you should be looking for. This is what's involved. [00:22:46] Jackie De Burca: Now. [00:22:46] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: We're not trying to turn people into energy engineers or insulation experts, but even having a kind of a reasonably basic level of understanding of what's required to do this and what does good look like is really important. [00:22:58] Jackie De Burca: Absolutely, yeah. Because it's new territory, you know, for, for most of these people. So yes, it is new territory. And not feeling stupid and not feeling like somebody's going to, you know, do, because you don't know what you're talking about. So that's all very, very useful. Now, one of the other obvious concerns is the actual workforce, you know, people upskilling to be able to do that kind of work. How is that going at the moment, Ciarán? [00:23:22] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Well, there's a lot of work out there, a lot of discussion in relation to the kind of the new build sector. And the workforce generally. So at an Ireland Inc. Level, we are, as I believe, at what they call economic full employment. That means unemployment levels about 4% or slightly less. And that means there's always people who are kind of entering and leaving the labor force. So the economists tell us that when you're at 4% level of unemployment, you effectively have full employment in that anybody who wants a job has a job. So there's competition in the labor force. There's a big piece of work around the new build sector competing with the retrofit sector. I can tell you I've spoken to a lot of the contractors, the retrofit sector. I spoke to them recently in terms of how we're developing things and they're very strong in the fact that there's not that much overlap between our sector and the new build sector. A lot of the guys doing the retrofit work, it's different type of work. So there will be people working on new builds, no question, doing insulation and plumbing, all the good stuff. A lot of the companies specialize in the new build side of. A lot of the retrofit companies specialize in the retrofit side of it. And the reason being if you go into a housing estate, you have 20 new houses and they're all brand new, halfway being built and you know you're effectively having no interaction with a homeowner and it's do the same thing 20 times across the housing side and there's a market for that. You go into a housing establishment, an occupied housing state. For example, the street I live on, the homes have all been there since 1970s and some are big and some are small, some have an extension, some don't. And you know, you're dealing with homeowners, you're dealing with people and you're dealing with people at completely different stages of their lives and their journeys. So you mentioned about your father being a bit elderly. Your next door neighbor could have just bought the house recently and they're going to go to it. And the other next door neighbor might be in their mid-40s where he's living. [00:24:51] Jackie De Burca: All these things are happening here. [00:24:53] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, exactly. So, well, he's a microcosm of your typical suburban kind of street in Dublin or Cork or Go. So the point is there's a different set of capabilities and skills going into a home that's been occupied, that's been in existence and use. So. So there's some overlap, but not as much as people might think. So I certainly spoke to the contractors and the clear narrative of conduct on our retrofit retrofitting side is there is capacity there and they just want people to kind of pick up the phone and get going with it. But now is a great time to think about retrofitting because, you know, we can retrofit all year round and all the rest of. But as we're coming into the autumn, you know, if you felt it was a bit cooler last year and I need to do something, first thing I'd be saying is make sure your attic and cavity is done. That's, you know, that's the starting point in terms of your insulation journey. And plenty of contractors out there do that. It's very quick. [00:25:37] Jackie De Burca: Okay, so yeah, we'll try and get this out, you know, to give the advice to the people. We'll try and maybe move another episode around because of the timing and it's such an important part of Arden's journey. You know, as you've mentioned earlier on the question for you, Ciarán, what do you feel the role of SEAI is in bridging the gap between high level policy and the on the ground delivery of these retrofits? [00:26:01] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Oh yeah, that's a great question, Jackie. And what you've slightly described is kind of like the sandwich and we're, we're the ham in the middle. So if I lean my office chair and look to the left, we're in delivery. So I mentioned at the height of the Discussion we supported 54,000 homeowners last year to do to an upgrade on their home and we want to do more next year and keep it going. So we've got a really strong delivery role. Since we take it, we deliver. And that earlier discussion on making sure the pain points removed, the speed bumps removed and it's as seamless as possible for homeowners to do the right thing, pivot the chair the other way. We lean back into our ministry and we have a really great team in there who are looking at the high level policy pieces in terms of what's they have to take government policy and where do you want to kind of spread the word and where they want the kind of schemes to work on. Get the funding from central government for the schemes and things like that. So you need a lot of work to do in terms of business cases, in terms of underlying demand and you know, huge piece of work on supporting our own department, our minister to get the funding to deliver on the schemes. So we are the bit in the middle and literally depending on the day in question, I can pivot around and start talking about how do we kind of optimize delivery and get things tracked to web websites, mobile phone, optimize all this kind of stuff to support delivery and making sure we've contractors in place, dealing with pain points. And then we get back in, we start thinking about, well, what's the future going to look like? Are we achieving the policy objectives? Are we going in the right direction? So it really is a game of two halves or to use that analogy of that we're kind of like the meat and the sandwich of the two sides, you know. [00:27:24] Jackie De Burca: Yeah, that's an interesting one. Now News Talk, I'm sure you're aware of their recent report. They highlighted that they feel that the uptake of retrofitting grants is still low. Why do you feel, Ciarán, that so few households are actually applying when it comes down to all the hard work you guys are doing? [00:27:41] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, I wouldn't necessarily agree that it's low because it's nearly 70,000 households applied last year, which is a pretty big number actually. What it is, it needs to be higher. So we need even more things to do. And really what it's about is you can look at high level economic information and things like that, but you know, at the end of the day it's individuals having to make an individual decision and where they're at in their journey in life. And there's no doubt about it, things sound to be a little bit tougher out there. There's a lot of information coming around in terms of people are feeling a bit of a pinch. There's a bit of cost of living, cost of groceries and things like that. Priorities in people's lives, depending where they are in life, you know, so they're all factors that have feed into a decision. And look, we would do regularly, we talk to behavioral people, we poll the market, we sample. People say, you know, what's stopping you doing what's starting, you know, why can't you do it? How do you think about people in certain parts of their journey, like typically younger people, for example, recently maybe have bought a house, want to updo it or do it up and whatnot. They could be put to the pin of the collar with their mortgage payments or they could say, look, I really love retrofit and I think it's great, but you know, I've got childcare going on and things like that. So we just recognize that different people are different stages in the journey. But fundamentally, I mean, the high level numbers tell us there's still quite a lot of savings out there, right? And if you look at central bank periodically to come out and say, look, since the last recession, which was a terrible time for a lot of people, Ireland Inc. Has been saving an awful lot of money, much more so than we had and the change in paying down mortgage debt. So there is quite a lot of built up savings. We're saying to people, you know, the whole retrofitting thing is interesting from a number of perspectives. It's kind of like there's five kind of pieces to it that really help. One is you can reduce the running cost of your home. Right. You can make a cheaper run of you if you insulated and retrofit. There's low cost, very good value energy loans available to pillar banks and credit unions to support you on your retrofit journey. Depending what you're doing and the scale of it, the green mortgages are available. If you're doing a bigger job, you've got health benefits from the retrofitting and the asset value of the house goes up. The comfort and health benefits are hard to put a fig an actual figure on. But in terms of living in a more comfortable home, a lot of the information we have, and it's kind of funny when we do the behavioral pieces, people get very practical and talk all about payback and all this kind of stuff. The start of the journey once they've done it and have a more comfortable home, that all falls off completely. And it's the benefit of the more comfortable home. The warmer conditions, the ability to use lots at home really become the important pieces. So, so I'm kind of saying to people there's recognizing that everybody is in a different stage of life in their journey, but there is chunks of savings out there. So I'd be saying to people retrofitting or starting in a journey would be a good investment in terms of your home. [00:30:12] Jackie De Burca: Okay. I mean I have no doubt about the benefits, you know, health wise and you know, investment wise and all of that sort of stuff. But I would be sort of in a similar position to yourself, Carol. Know we're going to go back to vintages and genres and whatnot for a second. [00:30:28] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, yeah. [00:30:29] Jackie De Burca: You know, I would be able to think about sort of, you know, would I like to do that if I was living in Ireland? I would definitely see the benefits. But what is the percentage of society who, you know, you just mentioned a little while ago what's happening in lots and lots of countries. You know, the, the day to day shopping costs have gone significantly up. So we'll say you're a younger Family on your journey with younger kids and now you challenge us to feed everybody and get the nappies and all that sort of stuff. I guess if I was in their position, I might be thinking, well, this is something for richer people, so how would we make it more inclusive, do you think? [00:31:04] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, that's a great point, Jackie. And look, and again, I recognize I was that soldier not that long ago in terms of, you know, life costs, but actually that's goes. You go back to the earlier conversation. We swivel into our policy. We're constantly looking at the schemes where they're happening, who's uptaking them and things like that. What can we do different? And you know, you talk about affordability, people. There is this kind of narrative dimension there, but oh, it's retrofit only for rich people. But actually no, it's not the case at all because even things like attic insulation, and I mentioned that is in a really great starting point. Get out attic insulation, you know, €2,000 or less and the grants of up to €1800, slightly more than €2,000, but there's grants up to €1800 for attic insulation. But you're talking about, you know, 50, 60% of the cost of attic insulation covered by the grant. So the net cost of the homeowner is relatively modest. That's the starting entry level if you want to get into it. In terms of retrofitting, I absolutely get and totally understand and we're looking at this constantly. If somebody has literally nothing left in the tin at the end of the week, whatever, it's difficult to consider that. But in terms of the concept that it's only for rich people, it's not at all. One of the best things you can do for your house is make sure you've got the right level of attic insulation and that there are significant grants for that on that there's lots of contracts out there and it's very keenly priced out in the market market and you know, we recommended that and look, it's back to that point of people on their journey. And again, I remember when we started with the one stop shop process first people gave me kind of negative feedback about, you know, it's only for a certain cohort and all the rest and I can't afford. And they were very anyways frustration that I couldn't do the whole lot in one go. And I was like, hang on a sec, do what you can do. That works for you and your family at this point in time and in two years time it might be slightly different and two years might be different again. So that's kind of what really trying to encourage people not to give up. You can't do everything, do a bit. And there is grants, very significant grants to support you on that one. [00:32:50] Jackie De Burca: Okay, so I think we've discussed, you know, one of the important misconceptions, which is, you know, it is only for rich people. So I think, you know, you've explained that very well. What other misconceptions, Ciarán, are, you know, popping around at the moment about retrofitting that are, that could be damaging to the uptake, do you think? [00:33:08] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, one of the big ones that comes around is that you have to move out of your house if you're doing a deep retrofit. And you know, one of the pain points, I'd heard somebody mentioned recently that it was going to move out and I couldn't find anywhere to rent and therefore that was a blocker, which I could understand that, but it was just, I kind of, I kind of picked on it a little bit because pretty much all of the measures involved in deep retrofit, you don't have to move out of your house. But what we see is a lot of people that are doing a really deep retrofit in their house are also doing other works as well. And so they're kind of conflating the two pieces together. Turned out that they were getting a kitchen remodeled and some construction work downstairs in the downstairs bathroom and all this kind of stuff done. So that's nothing to do with the retrofit that you're doing it at the same time. So there's a bit of a misnomer there. So you can do a lot of the works in deep retrofit while living in the home. That's one measure that was the under floor insulation, which we do support. Not that many people do it. And the people that do that particular measure tend to be ones that are doing a bigger kind of gutting of the house and whatnot. But you don't have to move out, do the deep retrofit. That's, that's very important. Estates people, you're doing the energy upgrades and we have the one stop shop. We've 25 one stop shops. We're working right the way across the country, engaging homeowners on a daily basis. And they're really starting to see traction. They're starting to see the things swing around and people get involved with them and things like that. It's starting to come right for them. They'll tell you to the End degree. And they're used with. Their contact is on the ground in terms of what's required. [00:34:25] Jackie De Burca: So one thing that we touched on earlier, Ciarán, briefly, was the variety of Ireland's aging housing stock. And obviously that's presenting unique challenges when it comes to retrofitting itself, doesn't it? What are those at the moment and how are you tackling those? [00:34:41] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, you're right, Jackie. I suppose we're probably no different than most European countries, if you want. But in our world, ending old about 1941, we put in the bracket of a traditional home. So you've got a house that was built, you know, the mass concrete kind of terrace homes built by local authorities, marino in the 1920s and 30s. And you've got a Georgian house built in the 1760s and everything in between. And just in terms of the buildings themselves, they're built differently. So the building physics is different. How moisture and how air flow to those houses are different, all those kind of things. So a good example is that a lot of the products, pretty much all the products we use at the moment and the retro buildings have an agriment search, which means they're certified to be the right product to be used in this particular way in these conditions in Ireland, and that means they're right. Many of those products would be impermeable. Right. So if you've got a really old stone cottage and you put impermeable insulation on the cottage, what actually happens, it can trap moisture because the physics of those cottages is that moisture travels in and out. And if you put an impermeable barrier, can have moisture damage and trap moisture. And the guys tell me, the architects and conservation people tell me that over a period of time, that impacts on the structure and that impacts mold and things like that. So what you need to do for those type of homes is you have to have different types of insulation materials that are sympathetic to the building physics. In other words, you can't put impermeable materials on a building or a wall or construction that's permeable. So we have to go back to traditional materials. And that's what our traditional homes pilot is doing. It's working with a really select group of homes and architects and experts to figure out what are the right materials to use these types of homes that gets the right outcome for the homeowner. And how can we scale it up? So that's kind of where we're at. Even within, you can see the different waves. If you've driven around Dublin, Cork and Galway running These are big towns. You'll see the different ways of building from the 70s and the 80s and 90s and how they're improving, things like that. And they all come with their own little nuances. [00:36:26] Jackie De Burca: What about the retrofitting contribution? You know, it's not only decarbonization, but, you know, climate resilience, Ciarán. Like coping with, you know, overheating and floods, as we talked about earlier. [00:36:38] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, that's exactly it. I suppose we don't really mean we. We've been, relatively speaking, lucky in Ireland in terms of things like overeating and cooling, because our climate is. Is relatively, and I say this relatively because of course there's always exceptions, but it's relatively benign. And I've often noticed if you stood and looked at a map of Ireland and you went east from Dublin, you're not badly off the latitude of Moscow. And if you went west from Dublin, you're not badly off the latitude of Newfoundland. And if you look at the climatic conditions of both of those areas, they have extraordinary hot summers, extraordinary cold winters. We don't tend to have that in Ireland, but what we're trying to do is we tend to have mud, generally milder and damper weather in Ireland, you know, thus far. And really, by retrofitting the home, you're improving the comfort of, the thermal comfort of it, but you're also making it cheaper to run and you're helping to kind of protect yourself against those changes that we're seeing coming more and more frequently. [00:37:33] Jackie De Burca: Are there any actual, like, exciting innovations, you know, the likes of, say, prefab deep retrofit systems or maybe AI based energy diagnostics that could help accelerate the progress that we're making here in Ireland. [00:37:47] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, well, that's it. We're looking at that. And one of the areas, and it's not specifically my area, and you'll hear them talk, people talk about this kind of modern methods of construction that's to a degree focused on the new build. So actually I was on a conference there last year, Jackie, and we had a very eminent professor from the UK and England and she put up her first slide in the conference. Really interesting and many. We talked about our vintage. So anybody of our vintage will remember this. The lady. The Ladybird books. It was kind of, you know, the little Ladybird books, you all learn skill, the little readers. And one from 1A to 12C or whatever it was, but they had a front cover Ladybird book from, I think it was 1955. Anyway, the point this professor was making was it was about the Ladybird guide to making houses, teaching kids how you make a house. And a little picture in front of a half built house, scaffolding and a little cement mixer and a man. There was no women on the site at the time, scooping the cement into the cement mixer. And we're all smiling. Oh, that's a Lady Birdbrook from 1955. Isn't that lovely? But her point is really interesting. She said, and this is the lady who's a kind of a professor of construction and things like that. She said, you know what, that's from 1955 or 50 or whatever it was around that kind of time. But if you walked onto a building site today, that's pretty much what you'd see. So we're talking about her point. Her underlying point is how we really need to drive on using modern methods of construction, using AI, using off site fabrication. So on the retrofit side, it's a little bit more difficult. You and I'm thinking about my street here, on your street there. All the houses were built, you know, by hand on the old way back in the 70s. They're all slightly different now because somebody else put a porch in and somebody else did a conservatory and somebody else did this and did that. So what we're doing, there's a pilot project, a group called Energy Sprung. It kind of came from Europe and they're based in the UK and we certainly had chats with them. And he'll go out there and they'll take upwards of a thousand measurements on the house, almost like a complete digital twin type thing of the house and they'll construct a retrofit off site. So I've seen a good few European projects where they've piloted this kind of technology and it looks really good, but it's really at the pilot stage at the moment rather than the mass deployment stage. But you would envisage with the improvements on things like AI remote sensing, you should be able to go out and do retrofits at scale off site and put them onto the homes. And actually the pilot, they did a pilot in Ireland as part of the project, a really good piece of work done and they picked a couple of houses. I think it was not loan. And even though the houses were nominally the same, when you went down to the individual specific measurements of the house, the window ledges in one house are actually 2 cm higher than the window ledges in the other house, you know, and you go, that's a shirt look, that's just matter really. But if you're trying to retrofit and do off site manufacturing. That's important stuff, you know. So we're at the front edge of that. I have no doubt if we were to fast forward and have this conversation in 10 years time, I've no doubt we'll be doing similar but very different things, different ways. [00:40:23] Jackie De Burca: I just popped into the chat like a link because again somebody. Another really fascinating guest was Will Frost of San Francisco. And that was exactly the topic. Now he calls, he prefers to call modern methods of construction optimized construction. [00:40:39] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Yeah, that's great. [00:40:40] Jackie De Burca: It's an interesting list. I've just popped it in there. Because of the fact that you're on the journey, you're on here with the work and the challenges that you have there. If you yourself had full control over the retrofitting program tomorrow got to be the first thing you change. [00:40:56] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: That's a really tough question. If anybody knows, I'm kind of a doer and we focus a lot on the delivery side of things. So I probably focus a lot on trying to simplify. So I gonna use the words simplify, standardize and consolidate. So the direction of travel really I think we were kind of thinking about heading towards anyway it's taking some of the complexity out of the various schemes. What you need to do, what you don't need to do basically and we, we chat a lot of bit as Jackie is that we need homeowners. Homeowners are generally, if you think about you or me or your niece or nephew, your cousin, your neighbor, they're very busy in their own lives, right? People are busy doing their jobs and doing whatever. We don't want them to be energy engineers, great if they are to be fantastic, but we don't need them to be that, you know, they're going to do this piece of work. Many people and I heard on the radio lately that, you know, buying a house or something, somebody does maybe once, maybe twice in their lives, right? If you retrofit the house, get the external wall insulation done, your house, you're not likely to do that again for maybe ever or for 25 or 30 years. So we really need to work harder at simplifying, standardizing, consolidating it. So it's just so easy to go through the pathway and get the job done. [00:42:07] Jackie De Burca: What would a retrofit success story look for you in 2026? Realistically, we'll say the end of 2026. [00:42:17] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: Oh, 2020. Well the first point will be spending them with the allocated money and hitting our targets. That's always Kind of our North Star on an individual basis. But what it would really mean is that we'd actually have excess demand and the people really start to pivot back to it and start on their journeys. So look, each year we've had even more stretch targets than the year prior. And again we chat at the start of the call that the first carbon period kind of comes to an end and from 26 onwards you're into, as they call it, certain parts of the country, senior hurling. And we need to make our numbers in 2026. That's what successful look like. [00:42:48] Jackie De Burca: Sure, absolutely. Now finally, Ciarán, what message would you like to give to the average homeowner and owning? The fact that we know that they're all in different aspects of their journeys and different properties, but they're interested in retrofitting but they're a bit overwhelmed by the process. What would you say to them? [00:43:05] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: I say get on our website, the sei ie. It's really easy to navigate, it explains a lot of things. And there's homeowner guide and we have a process to get on the journey. We say assess, right. If you have a beor, you probably have an advisor's report with that and that that's basically looking at the asset rating of your home. So in other words, in any journey, where are you starting from? So just say, for example, your home has a D1 rating. Fine. The advisor report will give you a high level. What should you be doing at that type of house? Get on our website and figure out, you know, a bit more detail on that. We have links to contractors, there is finance available. I touch on it, but I can't stress enough that there's really good rates available for a range of providers in the banks. Some low cost loans support you on your journey. You're talking about 3, 3.5% for many of them. 3.5% low cost loan for finance. Get on our website, it'll tell you what to do. You have links to the contractors and start your journey. [00:43:58] Jackie De Burca: Fantastic advice. So listen, Ciarán, I think we'll be catching up again because it's such a fast moving situation and it'll be exciting to keep talking and see how the journey is going for yourselves. Is there anything else you'd like to add, Ciarán? [00:44:12] Dr. Ciarán Byrne: No, just Jackie say thanks very much for the opportunity to have a chat with you here and it's a bit informal chat and we, we've covered a lot of ground but keep, keep, I keep harping out the key message. What was the, the best time to do something was about 25 years ago. Next best time to do it is today, you know, so get on the journey. So listen, thanks very much. I appreciate it. [00:44:30] Jackie De Burca: Thank you. This is constructive voices.