 Good afternoon everybody. As Syngen says, Deglan O'Donnelly is my name, from ESB Electric Ireland. And ESB Electric Ireland, like Saint-Gobain, just to say that we are delighted to be sponsoring one of the sponsors of today's conference. We see energy services as a great challenge and a great opportunity for ESB Electric Ireland and also for Ireland as a whole. And on that note I'd just like to say to Stefan from Germany, falsche Rote, wir wünschen Ihnen ein schönes Besuch nach Irland. Because while we welcome our guests from abroad and we can learn from them, clearly one of the key messages that's coming across today is that where it comes to retrofit there's an awful lot that we can do for ourselves. So I'm going to talk about a particular project, the real project that we've just completed in the last couple of weeks. It's 126 houses state in Dundalk. Mixed ownership, that is local authority and privately owned homes in the one estate. And all of the homes are occupied. And I suppose it's particularly interesting when we consider what some of the earlier speakers mentioned. Brendan Halligan for example talked about the industrialization of retrofit and the challenge of a million homes. And I suppose that was one of the drivers for this project to see how it might be possible to roll out larger scale retrofit. So what I'm going to talk about really is describing simple terms that project give you the results and then give you some preliminary recommendations from that project. I suppose what I need to say is that it was a partnership, a three-way partnership indeed between Dundalk Town Council, SEAI and ourselves. And we each had our own goals and thankfully the goals were all in the same direction. Dundalk Town Council have an urban vision for Dundalk. And so they were looking to upgrade local authority housing in Ashling Park. And one of the challenges about upgrading local authority housing is that particularly where you're in a mixed estate is that the private residents often are not too happy about that if they see their next door neighbours getting a retrofit. So that's a particular challenge for local authorities. Also what the Dundalk Town Council need to do is meet the ship guidelines from the Department of Environment. That's the social housing improvement planning guidelines which essentially set down different ranges of energy efficiency improvements typically between 100 and 200 kilowatt hours per square metre per year for a house. And ideally achieving a C1 or close to a C1 in terms of a BR rating for the house. And of course Dundalk Town Council were anxious to provide an exemplar for other local authorities. SEAI naturally you would expect very keen to support any innovation in this area and we're keen to support housing cluster energy retrofit pilot. And one of the things that they're working on currently is analysing the results from that pilot and will be involved in disseminating the lessons from our pilot. And from an ESB electric Ireland point of view as I say you know we had a gut feel that there were economies of scale to be derived from delivering larger retrofit projects rather than single retrofit projects and single house projects. And also we have a remit around fuel poverty or at least we have a long standing engagement with trying to reduce the risk of fuel poverty. And perhaps people will know that is quite a problem in Ireland with over 20% of homes qualifying under indices as being fuel poor. And you know that's something that we would like to help address. And we felt that this project would be one way of tackling what is a multi-dimensional problem. So moving on to the estate. Ashing Park most of the homes would have been built in the mid 1970s, 75, 76. Even though it's one estate, even within that estate there are a number of different home designs, four major home designs and then there are variations on each one of those. So there are two-story homes, there are bungalows. The houses tend to be small, typically about 80 square metres. A mix of constructions although predominantly cavity wall, cavity wall of different gap widths. Some timber frame in parts. The windows and doors are in very poor condition. And there's a mix of gas and oil boilers, about two-thirds gas, one-third oil. Most of the oil boilers would be more than 10 years old. So we looked at the different measures that might readily be applied to those houses. And part of that, this was a process and we worked very closely with SEAI in particular in terms of identifying, from looking at the houses and identifying the cost optimal measures for each house type. And that required a BER type assessment to be done of each of the four main house types and the variations thereof. And based on that information then it was possible to design optimum solutions. We looked at the solutions based on a model that had previously been developed by SEAI and their consultants, Besrak, which essentially brought each measure down to a value in terms of energy saved per euro invested. And in that way it was possible to rank the different measures, not just individually but obviously on a cumulative basis because when you install a high efficiency boiler you don't use nearly as much energy and therefore say attic insulation, you won't accrue quite as much savings as you would do if you hadn't installed the boiler. So we put together an appropriate package for each house based on the house type and based on the measures in a cost optimal fashion. And the project process, and it's I think useful to look at it in this way when we think about trying to move this to a larger scale at some future point, there are four discrete phases, collecting the data, design and preparation phase, delivering obviously and post delivery. We were fortunate in terms of collecting the data that Dundalk Town Council already had a wealth of information on the local authority housing, as I've mentioned, that was supplemented with in-depth technical surveys for 28 of the 126 houses. Then the cost optimal design, which I've mentioned, we had to prepare a detailed delivery plan and we set ourselves a goal of delivering the full retrofit within eight weeks. And then in terms of community communications was obviously a key element also. Fortunately we were able to draw on Dundalk Town Council's relationships, their community liaison officer. We organized two public meetings. We wrote to each of the homeowners and explained what it was we were doing. We talked to the local parish priest. Then in terms of delivery, as I say, we delivered the project through July and August. An element of that was documentation because there are obviously legal requirements when you go to work in somebody's house and along with that we carried out a socioeconomic questionnaire. So we have quite an amount of data that SEAI are crunching through at the moment. I have some preliminary results on that. Interestingly what we found was that despite the fact that we had done a very detailed technical analysis in advance and extrapolated that to the 126 buildings that we did come across some unexpected work that we needed to do. So, you know, for example, attic insulation, one of the problems that the residents had was storage. So it wasn't sufficient simply to put down the required depth of attic insulation. You know, there is a real need, particularly in a small house, to have attic storage so it was necessary to put down flooring in the attic as well. But there is an additional cost there. When you install new boilers, there are requirements around the ventilation for the building. And so there was, if you like, further cost associated with that. The regulations have obviously tightened up quite a bit in terms of things like separation distances between flue and oil tank where you have an oil boiler. And so oftentimes the flue had to be, for the boiler, had to be moved. So these are the kind of real things that you learn, I suppose, by carrying out a pilot. And certainly that's something that we feel can be addressed in any future projects of this nature. Post-delivery quality control, we have what I like to call a triple lock quality control mechanism. Within a week of the work being carried out by ESB Electric Ireland, we were back in the house asking people how they had found the work, were they happy with what had been done? Could they use the boiler? And in particular, were they able to program or reprogram the heating controls? And so we got quite a bit of feedback from that. But additional to that we had quality control carried out by independent, our own independent assessors, and of course SEAI and Dundalk Town Council for the private and the public housing respectively also carried out quality control. So in that sense we're very satisfied that it was very strong on quality and indeed that's the feedback that we've had from the residents and very strong feedback and support from Dundalk Town Council. Community training is something that we haven't done yet and indeed SEAI is going to take the lead on this. But again we want to make sure that whatever measures were installed are utilized to the maximum and SEAI will be putting together an independent final report. One of the things we want to do is I'll be presenting the results in terms of the calculated results. What we'd like to do is we'd like to check that against real energy consumption before and after. So here are the results. The total project, the total saving was 1.4 gigawatt hours which I think gives an idea of the scale of a gigawatt hour. Because a gigawatt hour is so large we tend to talk in small numbers but it really is quite a massive amount of energy. 124 houses, there were two houses that we couldn't actually work on. One because it was in the process of being sold, we couldn't contact the owner. And the second because we came across one of those hardship cases that you do sometimes come across where the individual had no energy at all in the house, no heating, no electricity and that's something that's been dealt with locally through the Dundalk Town Council social services. The expenditure perhaps was, okay rounded figures, about 4,000 euro. The average saving level was 140 kilowatt hours per meter squared based on the BER results. Average saving, 11,500 kilowatt hours, primary energy. And the average reduction therefore in heating energy consumption on a calculated basis is around 50%. And converting the 11,500 into an amount of money utilizing 6 cents per kilowatt hour which is the gas price leaves you with an average saving of about 700 euro per year. All averages as you'll see in a minute there's quite a bit of variation leaving a simple payback of just under 6 years. So the BER results for the pilot, before the retrofit as you can see most of the houses would have fallen into the E1, D2 bracket. Somebody said not as bad as hoped, but you know pretty bad and left a lot of room for improvement. You can see that there were houses there in the F and the G range and one can only imagine what kind of expenditure there might be there in terms of energy. After the planned measures it was possible to leap forward in terms of the BERs until practically all of the houses were in the sea level and most C2 and C1. And at that point we took some additional advice from the man on my left here, Michael Hanrati of IHER. And Michael has quite a bit of knowledge on this and was able to give us some remedies to just push up, nudge up some of those results. So for example, quite a number of examples, but for example by converting the chimney to a flue by installing a baffle in the throat of the fire it was possible to up the BER rating. Energy efficient lighting obviously as well was a very strong addition. But Michael, don't worry I won't give away all your secrets. So in terms of the preliminary results that I promised you from the socioeconomic survey, I mentioned that we were very interested in the whole area of fuel poverty. And the first question there, are you in receipt of a fuel allowance? And most people in the room will know that if you are in receipt of a fuel allowance you do qualify for the, under the warmer home scheme for an energy retrofit. There is a waiting list at the moment, but you do qualify. So in those terms 62% of the households visited would have qualified, which I think is a very strong result. It means that our actions were very targeted and that's a lot more than just the people in the local authority housing. Is your home kept adequately warm? 75% said no. Were there times last winter when you were cold because you could not afford to heat your home? 58% said yes. And then in terms of the, what's generally regarded internationally certainly is the UK as the threshold for fuel poverty if you spend more than 10% of your income on energy. You were regarded in the UK as being fuel poor. Now I have to say these results need to be taken with some caution because they are based on people's responses to a questionnaire. But based on the responses 77.5% were spending more than 10% on energy and indeed quite a number were spending more than 20%. So, you know, taking those very preliminary results together would indicate that by targeting what is a disadvantaged area also known as a, qualified now as a rapid area, rapid is a designation the local authorities have. It stands for revitalizing area through planning, investment and design. There's 100 such areas around the country. It would appear that it is possible to really target fuel poverty by targeting those areas. So, finally, recommendations. We believe area based retrofit can be delivered quickly and efficiently. We think it's important that clear criteria for success are agreed in advance. So, is it kilowatt hours per square meter? Is it to achieve a C1? Are there other criteria? And when we look forward indeed to the better energy program, you know, we believe it will be important that all of those criteria are aligned. Technical assessments for all houses before work commences, as I said, you know, what we've done, it was a pilot. There were learnings, we believe it can be streamlined further and that eight weeks for a similar scheme can be reduced considerably. Good communications, any project is important between the partners and also between the partners and the local residents. So, for example, and it was an initiative from, you know, our own people on the ground provided a 24 hour free phone number so that if any of the residents had any question at any time, they could call that number, any question about the energy retrofit at least. And that worked very well for us in terms of engendering confidence in the whole project. A very cost effective approach we believe for local authorities, it's for local authorities to decide, but as I say, Don Docktown Council have indicated that they're very pleased with the project. It's a turnkey solution. Effectively, it can be done quickly. You know, we're now experienced in delivering that kind of project, health and safety, et cetera, economies of scale. That's all taken care of. And the final point on recommendations is that from the initial and preliminary results based on the socioeconomic survey and as I say, SCAI is going through these results independently as well, it does appear that targeting rapid type areas is an effective way to target people at risk of fuel poverty and may well make a lot of sense rather than, you know, lots of individual trips to different homes. So that's it from me. I would just like to thank our partners from Don Docktown Council, David Story and Stephen Cole, who worked very closely with us on the project. And also thank SCAI, Declan Mealy, Mijela Kelleher and Agin Ohora. And I think together, this pilot, we've proved that, you know, there's something really interesting here and hopefully there will be many such projects into the future. Thank you. Kermagov.