Paul Murphy: Seeks Exemption for External Wall Insulation

This is the planning and development, exempted development, external wall insulation bill. It's a bill that is inspired by a particular case, that of Clive and Samantha Ryan, who live in Kilnamanagh in Tallagh. In the last week, actually, they thankfully have finally been granted planning permission for external wall insulation that they installed on their home six years ago. The news is, of course, very welcome. It's a massive relief for this family, because they were threatened with five years in prison if they didn't remove the wraparound insulation. This was despite the fact that they had used a government grant from the SEAI, as well as an SEAI-approved contractor to install the insulation. This was clearly a case of the right-hand not knowing what the left was doing. You had one arm of the state, the SEAI, rightly promoting retrofitting and reduction of carbon emissions, reducing their energy bills. And another, South Dublin County Council implementing planning laws that the government has failed to update in line with the legally binding climate action laws. It's the government that is at fault here. The Minister for Housing has himself admitted that new legislation is needed, and said that a public consultation will be held on this this year. But given the rollback of climate action across a range of areas by this right-wing Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Lowry government, I won't be holding my breath. Since January, they have reneged on previous government commitments to introduce minimum BER standards for the private rental sector. They've reneged on banning imports of fracked gas. They're now welcoming in fracked LNG from the U.S. They're trying to overturn the moratorium on constructing new data centres in the Dublin area, and they're turning Ireland into a wild west for uncontrolled, fossil-fuelled expansion of AI and data centres. So I don't trust the government to take action on this very, very simple issue either. That's why I, and People Before Profit, are introducing this bill to get the government to move on this as quickly as is possible. The purpose of our bill is to ensure that such an outrageous situation as that happened to Clive and Samantha Ryan will never happen again. The bill does that by exempting external wall insulation from planning permission, except in certain very limited circumstances. For example, if a building is a protected structure or in an architectural conservation area. This is similar to the current exemption that exists for installing solar panels, and the reasoning for it is the same. The climate and cost-savings benefit outweigh any minor aesthetic impacts in the overwhelming majority of cases. So the presumption should be that external wall insulation, just like solar panels, are exempt from planning permission. It's not rocket science, it's simple common sense. When I raised this with the Taoiseach before, he told me that, quote, we want people to insulate. We do not want people to be penalised for insulation. But that is exactly what the government is doing every day. Not just by leaving people at risk of imprisonment for insulating their homes, but by refusing to fund the cost of home retrofits, even though it's a win-win for people, for cost of living and for our environment. Clive and Samantha and everyone else who gets their home retrofitted is always delighted at how much more comfortable their home is, how much they save on their energy bills. When you talk to them about it, despite everything that they have been through, they sing the praises of this external insulation. But the government persists in forcing people to pay thousands of euros to finance home retrofits. The grants on offer are entirely inadequate to the costs involved, and the practice of individual home retrofits by a hodgepodge of private contractors is incredibly inefficient. What is needed is a statewide public retrofitting programme carried out for free by a state construction company, going into towns and villages retrofitting whole estates at the same time, regardless of whether they are privately owned or owned by the Council. This would generate huge economies of scale savings, and ensure that the benefits of climate action are shared equally by all. At the moment, we have a situation where low-paid workers and renters are being excluded from retrofitting, where they are the ones who would benefit the most from lower energy bills. The government has chosen instead to target retrofitting grants and tax breaks at better-off homeowners and at landlords because they are the core voter base of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and the right-wing independents. It is a disgrace that this kind of self-serving political logic still dominates in the midst of a climate emergency. We need to recognise that this is an existential crisis, and immediately move to universal free retrofitting for all. Exempting external wall insulation is an important, small but important part of doing so. Exempting external wall insulation is an enormous amount of mileage所 within the productsxe protease, north of the увидdiocese design, neutral wall insulation, in the directсе of deserving financial closure, NER. Exempting external wall insulation, information Portal 3, and within the dividing quo 23 of 8.