Better Energy: questions answered?

Earlier this week we sent three questions to the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources (DCENR) on the government's Better Energy building upgrade programme. Here's how they responded:

CI: Has the proposed tax relief on energy efficient works for homeowners that was announced in Budget 2011 been scrapped? 

DCENR: The tax relief announced in Budget 2011 is subject to a commencement order, which at this point has not been brought forward by the Minister for Finance.  

CI: The press pack that accompanied the launch of Better Energy said the government had previously set aside €60m for energy efficiency upgrades in 2011. But the budget set aside €69.252m for capital expenditure for "sustainable energy programmes". Was the €60m figure a typo?

DCENR: The original budget allocation for retrofit was around €60 million for capital works with the balance set aside for current.

CI: How was the department's estimate that the "additional" €30m funding for 2011 would create an extra 2,000 jobs calculated? Did this figure take into account any potential job losses from the withdrawal of grants for heat pumps and biomass boilers?  

DCENR: Applications for heat pumps and biomass boilers have declined considerably in recent months with applications in these areas representing in the order of 10% of the total applications received. This was factored into our calculations.

Note: We would presume it is now highly unlikely there will be any commencement order for the €30m tax relief referred to in question one — this makes it potentially dubious for the government to claim it is putting an additional €30m into Better Energy. As you can see, our query as to how the 2,000 jobs estimate was calculated was largely ignored.