Doubts raised over government's claims for Better Energy programme

SEAI's Brian Motherway (left), energy minister Pat Rabitte (centre) and the Department of Energy's Stjohn O'Connor launch the government's Better Energy upgrade programme on 11 May.

Earlier this month, energy minister Pat Rabbitte announced an "additional" €30M in government funding for building energy upgrade programmes for 2011. The government said the funds would "support an additional 2,000 jobs in 2011". These figures were reported largely without criticism in the national media. But they appear to be quite dubious, as our series of blog posts over the last few weeks has shown. Here's why:

The government claims the €30M in funding is additional to the money the previous government had committed to energy upgrades for 2011 (€60M). But the previous Fianna Fáil—Green government also announced a tax relief on home energy efficiency upgrades in Budget 2011, and this has yet to be introduced. The total value the last government pledged to fund the energy efficiency tax relief? €30M.

The tax relief will only be introduced if the minister for finance, Michael Noonan, signs a commencement order. The Department of Finance told Construct Ireland that it cannot state when or if the order will be signed. Commencement orders for budget measures sometimes remain unsigned for years — or forever.

Construct Ireland suspects the commencement order will remain unsigned, and that the €30M tax relief will quietly slip away. If we're correct, the government's claim to be putting an "additional" €30M into Better Energy is dubious. The tax relief may not have been part of that programme, but it was nonetheless an investment in making buildings more energy efficient.

We asked the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) how the 2,000 jobs figure was calculated. It replied:

The number of jobs is derived from the additional monies allocated by the government which we know will leverage similar levels of private funding in what are labour intensive works and based upon the typical wages in the sector.

But if the money isn't really "additional", neither are the jobs. After all, the tax relief would have created jobs too. What's more, the 2,000 jobs figure does not appear to take into account potential job losses from the withdrawal of grants for heat pumps and biomass boilers — Construct Ireland is already hearing about companies losing work due to these grants being pulled.

We also emailed DCENR asking why it withdrew grants for some renewable technologies while maintaining support for oil and gas boilers, but a spokesperson did not address the question directly, and simply said:

The grant available for a new oil or gas boiler only represents a contribution to the additional cost incurred by the homeowner in choosing a high efficiency boiler (i.e. >90% efficiency) versus the standard required by the building regulations (i.e. >86% efficiency). The homeowner must also install heating controls in order to avail of the €160 subsidy.