Retrofitting

++1

If the intention was to actually increase the volume of home construction & retrofitting, the blindingly obvious step 1 would be to increase the capacity of the construction industry. Starting with all the government (local & national) bodies/departments/agencies plus semi-states taking on large numbers of apprentices several years ago. They (all the local authorities, housing agency, OPW, ESB, DAA, etc) should be training far more apprentices (in all areas) than they themselves require so there's some hope that what is a large excess for the government/semi-states might actually start filling some gaps in the private sector.

When the state/semi-state sector actually has some capacity they can then start directly retrofitting (and building) homes. Relying on the private sector to do (and do well) what is hasn't been doing well really ever in the past is delusional in my opinion.

The upper end of that scale at 8% is 1% higher than my credit union rate for home improvements, and more than twice their mortgage rate. The only people who are gonna avail of such gouging rates are the people who have no real alternatives, and probably can't afford the repayments anyway. The rate charged should be the cost of finance for the state (2.64% today apparently) plus an admin fee.

I'm not sure you can separate the general construction industry from the sector specifically aligned towards retrofitting, simply because so many people will do energy efficiency & general retrofitting/renovation together. For example, a plumber who is installing a system fit for an air-source heat pump as part of a retrofit is manifestly not installing such a system in a new build, and the relevant activity is therefore displaced from one part of the construction industry to another where both segments are already desperately short of skilled/professional resources. The only solution to that problem is increasing the size of the pool of skilled & professional persons to deliver what's required.

I see where you're coming from on different rates of stamp duty for different BER ratings. There's a lot of merit to that idea in fairness, although it'd probably (IMO) work better as a refund: ie, charge (whatever rate) punitive stamp duty immediately on the sale of the property, and get a refund when you submit an upgraded BER later. I don't think there should be any limit on the definition of "later" though. Say the punitive rate is progressive at 1% for the B's. 2% for the C's & 3% for D's or lower. So a €300k house at D3 get's hit with 18% of €54k of additional duty. It's upgraded to B3 a few years later, and you get a refund of €45k. That would be motivating.

Yeah, the 400k retrofits by 2030 is just a wild fantasy and isn't going to happen. And yeah, absent radical change the level of failure around retrofitting (and desperately needed construction activity in general) will be legendary. Or more accurately the level of failure will be even more legendary, given that there's already been plenty written about the abject failure in delivery around housing & energy efficiency retrofitting already.