Housing In Ireland Research Articles

Energy retrofits: Factors affecting a just transition to better indoor air quality

In comparison with other European countries, Ireland has a disproportionately high number of poorly performing energy-inefficient buildings. Consequently, Ireland has one of the most ambitious energy retrofit programmes in Europe. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of deep energy renovation measures i.e. (replacement of heating system and upgrade to building envelope) on indoor air quality, thermal comfort and ventilation in a sample of primarily social housing in Ireland. A mixed methods approach including measurement of indoor air quality and a thermal comfort questionnaire survey was employed. Indoor concentration measurements of PM2.5, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, and radon along with measurements of air temperature and relative humidity were made (N=14). Occupants (n=56) completed a thermal comfort questionnaire survey pre- and post-retrofit. Data collection ran from autumn 2020 until autumn 2023.Thermal comfort improved post-retrofit along with occupant satisfaction with the indoor thermal environment and heating-systems. Post-retrofit, higher bedroom CO2, and higher PM2.5 concentrations were recorded in both living areas and bedrooms. Occupant behaviours e.g. blocking wall vents were significant predictors of poorer ventilation while smoking indoors was related to higher concentrations of PM2.5. In general, homes that had mechanical ventilation systems installed were better ventilated. Underventilation, as indicated by visible condensation or mould was observed in half of the social homes surveyed and reported by questionnaire respondents (26 %). Tailored communications to occupants regarding the important role of ventilation and indoor air quality is required as part of retrofit to optimise impacts on IEQ.

Transparent insulation integration in solar thermal collector: Advancing performance for domestic water heating in oceanic climates of Western Europe

Decarbonizing residential hot water demand requires efficient solar collectors. Conventional flat plate collectors are widely available but experience high heat losses in colder climates. This work investigates the performance of a modified flat plate collector that incorporates honeycomb transparent insulation to reduce convective heat loss, offering a cost-effective alternative to energy-efficient evacuated tube collectors. The thermal performance of the modified flat plate collector was obtained using the finite element method in COMSOL Multiphysics, revealing a significant reduction in convective heat loss. The obtained thermal performance was then incorporated into a transient simulation to assess the year-around performance of the modified flat plate collector in a solar domestic hot water system for Irish climate. The transient simulation accounted for variations in the transparent insulation’s transmission with incidence angle which was overlooked in previous studies. Over a year-long simulation, the modified flat plate collector generated a total useful energy of 532.45 kWh m−2, while requiring 1640 kWh of auxiliary energy to meet the hot water demand of a single-family house in Ireland. An economic analysis of solar domestic hot water system revealed that the modified flat plate collector could yield savings of 443.44 € more than the standard flat plate collector and 3281.03 € more than the evacuated tube collector for homeowners. Consequently, the simple payback period for the solar domestic hot water system decreased from 3.72 years with a standard flat plate collector and 8.37 years with an evacuated tube collectors to 3.56 years with a modified flat plate collector. In addition to its economic viability, the modified flat plate collector could result in a CO2 savings of 901.85 kgCO2 per year. The study concludes with a sensitivity analysis to identify the market conditions that maximize the profitability of the modified flat plate collector based solar domestic hot water system.

Assessment of hygrothermal performance and mould growth risk in roofs of post-retrofitted non-dormer and dormer attic rooms with reduced ventilation

Building insulation upgrades focusing on energy conservation must also consider the hygrothermal performance of materials and the indoor environment. Previous research has shown that deep insulation retrofit may inadvertently reduce ventilation and increase relative humidity, increasing the risk of mould growth. This study used traditional housing in Ireland with pitched roofs as the case study to examine changes in the hygrothermal environment following the energy retrofit of a dormer-style attic room. The study compared the mould growth index (MGI) of roof rafters under different energy retrofit scenarios to understand the effect of adding a habitable dormer-style attic room on the house's mould growth risk. The results show that adding an occupied dormer room can increase the MGI of spruce rafters from below 1 to around 5.2 at 0.2 air changes per hour (ACH) of infiltration. In most scenarios, a ventilation rate lower than 1 ACH cannot prevent the MGI of rafters from reaching the critical threshold of 3, unless a 1 mm vapour barrier is added. A ventilation rate over 5 ACH is adequate to limit the mould growth risk, but mechanical ventilation may be required to achieve this level of attic ventilation. This study enhances understanding of the relationship between attic roof ventilation rate and the risk of mould growth during the energy upgrade of dormer style attic rooms, a common housing type across Northern Europe and further afield.

The Ethics of Engagement and Representation in Community-based Participatory Research

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on ethics in community-based participatory research (CBPR) from inception to post-publication. Central to CBPR is a collaborative, partnership approach that recognises the strengths of partners and engages their distinctive voice and knowledge in the research process. While the ethical complexities that arise in the course of research practice in CBPR can transcend individual projects, they are also grounded in the particularity of the project, community, and research partners. This paper reflects on the experiences of two participatory social policy research projects on housing in Ireland, conducted over the past three years. These projects involved collaborating with older people living in rural areas nationwide and with residents of small communities on offshore islands. The paper explores the ethics of engagement (regarding methods of involvement and access), and the ethics of representation (incorporating the depiction and sharing of research findings) and argues that researchers must pay attention to the specificity of each project and be alive to generating an organic research ethics in how research is set up, conducted, represented, and disseminated. In so doing, we can better foster agency and authenticity in the relationships developed throughout research processes and reflect on and meet shared values and responsibilities.

Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It by Rory Hearne, and: Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets ed. by Lorcan Sirr, and: Ways out of the European Housing Crisis ed. by Christoph U. Schmid

Reviewed by: Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It by Rory Hearne, and: Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets ed. by Lorcan Sirr, and: Ways out of the European Housing Crisis ed. by Christoph U. Schmid Martina Madden (bio) Rory Hearne, Gaffs: Why No One Can Get a House and What We Can Do About It (Dublin: HarperCollins Ireland, 2022), 342 pages. Lorcan Sirr (ed.), Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2022), 313 pages. Christoph U. Schmid (ed.), Ways out of the European Housing Crisis (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2022), 416 pages. There is nobody in Ireland who can be unaware of the crisis in housing and homelessness at this point, either through first-hand experience or its prevalence in the news cycle. Unfortunately, despite the fact that almost 11,000 people are homeless and an innumerable amount are unable to find or maintain a secure affordable home, no imminent solution to the problem has been found. Three books published this year examine issues around the crisis and attempt to contribute to its resolution. Gaffs, by Maynooth University lecturer Rory Hearne, sets out ‘to inform, engage, educate and inspire real change in housing’.1 Housing in Ireland: Beyond the Markets, edited by Lorcan Sirr, a Senior Lecturer in Housing, Planning and Development at the Technological University Dublin, brings together a range of housing experts and practitioners to ‘deliberately neglect market issues, and instead focus on elements of housing that have never been examined deeply enough’.2 Ways out of the European Housing Crisis, edited by Christoph U. Schmid, Professor of European Private and Economic Law at the University of Bremen, seeks to fill the gap of the ‘scientific evaluation, categorisation and comparison aimed at exploiting the potential of tenure innovation and diversification’3 in housing. These are three very different books. They are for different audiences and reflect this in their content as well as the overall style and tone of the writing. But together they make a valuable contribution to the conversation around this often complex and seemingly intractable issue. Gaffs is an accessible book aimed at the cohort most affected by the current crisis – Generation Y, or Millennials (broadly defined as people born [End Page 120] between the years 1981 to 1996), who are also known as Generation Locked-out, Generation Rent, and Generation Emigration. Aside from Hearne’s academic credentials, he is a well-known media personality who has a strong online presence via his Twitter profile and Reboot Republic podcast, making him well-placed to reach the readers this book targets. Gaffs answers the first part of the book’s subtitle in the first four chapters. No one can get a house – primarily – because of a historical policy shift in the 1980s where the Irish state stopped building public housing and instead moved to an economic framework that promoted the market provision of housing; the repercussions of which we are now only fully experiencing. Hearne takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the many and varied failures of successive governments to act to prevent this catastrophe, in a journey that begins with state’s initial commitment to providing homes as a form of social welfare, to the pivot to free market capitalism which ultimately enabled the Celtic Tiger, and through the political decisions taken in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash that have led us to the point we are now at. For the next four chapters, Hearne delves deep into the impact of the lack of affordable housing on people’s lives. The statistics about this crisis are shocking enough – almost 11,000 people are homeless and another 250,000 are the ‘hidden homeless’, whose personal stories evoke a feeling of anger on behalf of people whose lives are on hold through no fault of their own. Relationships are affected or not possible, having children is deferred, taking on a challenge like going back to college or changing career becomes too risky when you have nowhere secure to live or are forced to move back in with aging parents. Adults stuck in their parental home comprise an astonishing 10% of...

The political frame of a housing crisis: Campaigning for the right to housing in Ireland

ABSTRACT This article examines the politicized discourse employed by housing movement to shift long-standing narratives around housing, that attempt to shape the national debate over Ireland’s housing crisis. Amid issues of housing insecurity and affordability, homelessness in particular has become a hotly debated issue over the past decade and images of increasing family homelessness as a consequence of the housing crisis have sparked public outrage. Campaigners and activists have challenged the government’s market-based policy responses and demanded housing that is accessible to those who need it. The results show that while the narratives used by activists to change housing policy were somewhat successful in raising the issue of homelessness as a housing problem, the movement was less effective in motivating public concerns around housing as a fundamental right and in building a larger mass housing movement.

Reviews: Housing in Ireland: Beyond the markets

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Book Review: Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914 by Maeve O’Riordan

Book Review: <i>Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914</i> by Maeve O’Riordan

‘A Striking Air of Modernity Tempered with Tradition’: Vernacular Modernism and the Design of the Public House in Cork and Dublin, 1934–1969

Abstract In design history discourse, modernity and tradition can be seen as intimately related rather than dichotomous. For example, Michelangelo Sabatino has noted the complex relationship between them in Italian twentieth-century architecture. What was the relationship between modernity and tradition in post-Independence Ireland? One way of investigating this is to consider the design of a quintessentially everyday space: the pub. From the 1930s, many pubs in Cork and Dublin were re-designed through a series of negotiated responses to modernisation. By 1960, this was complicated by the construction of what we would recognize as interiors designed to appeal to an imagined tourist vision of the pub in Ireland. This article argues that these changes were design responses to three interlinked historical forces: modernization, the retention or invention of vernacular design, and the influence of international trade and tourism. This considerably complicates our understanding of Irish modernism and illustrates that, for the public house in Ireland at least, British design was a dominant influence.

Book Review: Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914 by Maeve O’Riordan

Book Review: <i>Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914</i> by Maeve O’Riordan

Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Liverpool University Press. 2018. xv + 339pp. £85.00.

Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Liverpool University Press. 2018. xv + 339pp. £85.00.

Take back the city: Building an interracial class coalition to fight for ‘Homes for All’

This article draws on empirical data collected through in-depth interviews conducted with Irish and migrant activists from the Take Back the City housing coalition to incite the debate about the potential of interracial class coalitions and to point out the challenges of migrant activism in Ireland. Take Back the City was a movement from below, which through the praxis aimed to challenge common sense with good sense. It questioned the commodification of housing in Ireland by reframing the housing crisis as a result of political and economic decisions, as well as in its strategy of occupying empty buildings. Claiming Homes For All, activists noticed that this slogan was not all-encompassing and as such was insufficient to help recognise that it also referred to those who came to Ireland to study, work or seek asylum. As the hegemonic narrative understands the world through concepts such as the nation-state, borders and citizenship, it automatically excludes non-nationals as the people, the subject of rights within a nation-state. This article locates Take Back the City experience within the discussion on race and class dynamics addressed by anti-racist and anti-capitalist scholars and activists.

Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860-1914, by Maeve O’Riordan

Reviewed by: Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914 by Maeve O'Riordan Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga (bio) Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914, by Maeve O'Riordan; pp. xv + 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, £85.00, $120.00. Maeve O'Riordan's meticulously researched and well-written study, Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914, reflects the growing interest in the private and public lives of aristocratic women. In one of the first attempts to focus on women of the landed class, Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh's The Woman's Domain: Women and the English Country House (1990) argued that, even though the home traditionally is defined as the woman's domain, the research into country house living had for a long time been determinedly male-centric. When scholarship set its sights on the landlords, women were either forgotten entirely or assumed to be insignificant; in effect, the popular perception of aristocratic women veered between images of husband-hunters and passive, unhappy victims. Since then, the research into aristocratic women's private lives and their role in the public [End Page 346] and political spheres has grown significantly, redefining many popular misconceptions. Concurrently, the broadly defined category of the British aristocracy has been nuanced by studies of the elites in other parts of the British Isles. O'Riordan's study contributes to this process of nuancing by examining a largely unexplored theme of "the female half of the landed class" in Ireland during the second half of the Victorian era (19). The book spotlights the lives of women in twelve aristocratic families who had houses in Munster. Munster is "chosen as a microcosm of the island of Ireland" and claimed to represent best the "landowning families in the country" (5–6). The sample selected for the study is sufficiently broad to be considered representative and conveniently delineated to enable in-depth analysis. The study "purposely focuse[s] on surviving archival material" and offers a comprehensive analysis of personal records, letters, memoirs, scrap-books, wills, marriage settlements, account books, house inventories, and newspaper cuttings (19). The analysis is complemented by the discussion of artistic and creative works, literary and visual. The aim of the study is to give voice to these women and to examine how they "viewed and acted themselves" (5). While it is not meant as a "road map of social change in Ireland at the time," O'Riordan's book complements such studies by giving a good understanding of what it meant and how it felt to be an aristocratic woman in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century until World War I (20). While earlier studies tended to concentrate on either the private or public lives of aristocratic women, O'Riordan tries to capture the whole complexity of women's experiences and activities, both in the house and in the wider world. This is a valuable perspective, and on reading the book one gets a fuller picture of the variety of women's roles and the life paths they navigated within the constraints of a patriarchal society. It considers the roles of mothers and wives but also the specific position of unmarried women in aristocratic homes. It gives good insight into the challenges faced by ambitious and artistically talented women and by political activists. The book consists of eight chapters and covers such diverse topics as courtship, marriage, family relations, women's roles in the continuation of family lines, access to education, individual tastes and talents, house management, financial and living arrangements, relations with tenants and servants, philanthropy, and activism. It convincingly argues that "women felt a close connection, and a strong sense of duty, to the house" (48) and "were essential to the continued dominance of a set of ideals which defined the class" (12). In effect, O'Riordan demonstrates that greater insight into the experiences of women is crucial for the understanding of the whole class and that re-gendering the country house is necessary to fully comprehend the functioning of the manorial order. The author explains why aristocratic women living in Munster were loyal predominantly to their class and families rather than to the national cause...

Irish Social Housing

Review Article Irish Social Housing Social Housing Policy in Ireland: New Directions, Eddie Lewis (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2019), xv + 342 pages. Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer, Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin: Merrion Press, 2019), xix + 283 pages. Housing in Ireland, The A–Z Guide, Lorcan Sirr (Dublin: Orpen Press, 2019), xx + 358 pages. Judging from the colour supplements and breathless tone dedicated to private housing in the Irish media, there is something exhilarating about private home ownership. This excitement does not extend to social housing, which, if it is covered at all, is typically discussed as a dour, detail-heavy question of policy.1 Yet it is a question of fundamental importance for any society concerned with justice and equity and once we scratch the surface, it becomes a topic of fierce contestation. This is demonstrated powerfully in an anecdote shared in Eoin Ó Broin’s recent book on the Irish housing system. He recounts a dramatic dispute between church and state which occurred in 1968. At the eye of this very public storm was a set-up that sounds like the beginning of a bad standup routine: ‘A Dominican priest, a Jesuit, and a member of the Communist Party of Ireland were talking … ’. During a broadcast of Outlook, an RTE show edited by Fr Austin Flannery OP, there was a discussion of the housing issue with Fr Michael Sweetman SJ and Michael O’Riordan, spokesman for the Communist Party. In the aftermath of the discussion, the Minister for Local Government accused Flannery of an ‘abuse of privilege’ by a ‘socalled cleric’. The then Minister for Finance, Charles Haughey, dismissed Flannery as a ‘gullible cleric’. However, the anger of the government at this effort to highlight housing injustices was not quelled by name-calling. For every future show which Fr Flannery produced, a member of the Garda Special Branch would be posted to sit in the RTE studio as a silent observer to prevent any recurrence of previous events. As each person requires a home to flourish, the government were sensitive to criticism and worried about political damage if the extent of housing inequality was to be unveiled. Time Studies • volume 109 • number 433 74 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 74 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 74 27/02/2020 13:59 27/02/2020 13:59 moves on but it remains the case that there is nothing new under the sun. In the midst of the current Irish housing and homelessness crisis, three books were published in 2019 representing diverse views, influences and experiences. Eddie Lewis, a former civil servant in the Department of Housing, has written Social Housing Policy in Ireland: New Directions, a detailed account of current social housing policy, outlining a number of potential paths and then expanding upon a preferred route forward based on his political experience and administrative nous.2 In Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer, drawing on a leftist Republican heritage, Eoin Ó Broin, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing, lays out his case for a much more radical vision for how the state should provide housing. Lastly, from an academic perspective, Lorcan Sirr explores some of the complexity of housing policy by writing an encyclopaedic and thoroughly accessible book, Housing in Ireland: The A-Z Guide. In this review article I will firstly present a general overview of each book, allowing them to be considered on their own merits. Then, drawing out some threads of consensus and disagreement within the books, I will outline how neoliberalism has changed how social housing is understood and subsequently funded in Ireland, and then consider the future of social housing policy. Eddie Lewis, who worked in the department until 2012, admits in his foreword that Social Housing Policy in Ireland: New Directions has been ‘many years in gestation’, which is evident in the author’s in-depth knowledge of the topic, his familiarity with the thought process behind why certain decisions were taken and his mastery of the financial details and numbers. Displaying a commendable loyalty to former ministers, as no names are mentioned, his book fills in gaps in public knowledge by clarifying the rationale during decision-making and lifts the veil on priorities within the...

Sustainable energy efficiency retrofits as residenial buildings move towards nearly zero energy building (NZEB) standards

1.9 million housing units in Ireland are required to be retrofitted for the existing Irish national housing stock to be considered nearly zero energy building (nZEB). This paper assesses optimum retrofit packages aimed at improving the building material thermal efficiencies and energy demand of gas-heated semi-detached and end-terraced houses in Ireland. The cost-optimal methodology framework for calculating cost optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements for buildings and building elements is used to determine the optimum retrofit packages from both a householder perspective and a societal perspective. The results of the cost-optimal approach are compared to the results from a weighted framework approach which incorporates life cycle environmental and cost indicators from both a householder perspective and a societal perspective.The results found that the ranking of energy efficiency retrofit designs based on multiple life cycle environmental and cost indicators differ compared to cost optimum designs based on only life cycle energy and cost indicators. The cost-optimal approach was found to be effective for identifying retrofit packages that are among the best packages even without accounting for multiple environmental indicators. However, once multiple indicators were considered, the hierarchy of the optimal retrofit packages changed. In the Irish context, the environmental impact of the Irish electricity grid was found to play a significant role in the hierarchy of the retrofit packages examined.While the cost-optimal method should not be relied on solely for identifying the optimum retrofit package solution, it could be employed as part of the multistage assessment methodology for narrowing down design solution sample sizes. Using the remaining array of retrofit packages solutions, the optimum retrofit package could be identified using multiple indicators.

Funding incentives, disincentives and vulnerabilities in the Irish council housing sector

This article examines the incentives and vulnerabilities generated by arrangements for funding local government-provided social housing in Ireland (aka council housing). These arrangements are unusual in a Western European context because the capital costs of providing this housing are almost entirely covered by central government grants, rather than non-governmental debt finance as is the norm elsewhere. Furthermore, no housing allowances are provided to council tenants in Ireland; rather affordability is ensured by charging rents which are linked (progressively) to tenants’ incomes. Although the character and development of Irish council housing has of course been shaped by macro level political, ideological, social and economic factors, the argument offered here is that funding arrangements have also exerted a strong independent influence. These arrangements render Irish council housing more vulnerable to retrenchment and residualization than the social housing funding arrangements used in most other Western European countries.

Cost Allocation Model for Net-Zero Energy Buildings under Community-Based Reward Penalty Mechanism

Abstract The introduction of financial incentives for net-zero energy building/community (ZEB/ZEC) is a potential strategy that facilitates the development of sustainable buildings. In this study, a reward-penalty mechanism (RPM) is firstly proposed for a community that aims to achieve the target of annual zero energy balance. In order to investigate the cost allocated for each building in the community, a cost allocation model by considering the load of these buildings and the levels of zero energy building achieved is further proposed, based on which four typical types of the model is selected and investigated. The economic performance of a building under the four types of allocation model is then compared for a community that consists of 20 family houses in Ireland. By considering the possible ZEB level ranges in each building, two Cases are conducted (Case 1 – the range is between 0.0 and 1.0; Case 2 – the range is between 0.5 and 1.0). The results show that the 1st model is the simplest one that allocates cost evenly. By contrast, the cost of a building depends on its load in the 2nd model and depends on the ZEB level it achieved in the 3rd model, while it considers the two factors evenly in the 4th model. The proposed cost allocation model is expected to provide a basic guide for the designers of financial incentives as well as experts in the fields of net-zero energy buildings.

Improving energy savings from a residential retrofit policy: A new model to inform better retrofit decisions

Retrofitting is one of the most important policy measures for timely decarbonisation of the residential sector due to slow turnover of the housing stock. Ireland is an interesting case study given the high reliance on oil as a fuel, the dispersed pattern of residential housing and the relatively poor energy efficiency performance of the existing housing stock. Decarbonising residential space and water heating has proved challenging in the Irish context. These energy service demands are generally inflexible and resilient to reduction due to a range of considerations including external weather conditions, fuel price and the rebound effect. This paper examines and challenges the suitability of popular retrofit combinations as they apply to nine distinct building archetypes in Ireland's housing stock portfolio. An archetype simulation model is used to evaluate the potential for improved energy efficiency gains within the existing retrofit program. We introduce a new methodology that provides insights into sub-optimal retrofit choices. The five most common retrofit combinations are simulated for each of the nine archetypes. The results show that the alternative retrofit combination differs by archetype and that additional energy efficiency gains of up to 86% can be achieved due to alternative retrofit choices. We believe there is room to improve building energy efficiency standards in Ireland through the implementation of a bespoke building retrofit grant scheme which delivers better informed retrofit choices and more effectively considers the pre-existing condition of a building as part of the initial application process. The implications of this analysis are explored and insights for policy are also provided.

Women of the country house in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Pp 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2018. £85.

Women of the country house in Ireland, 1860–1914. By Maeve O'Riordan. Pp 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2018. £85.

Thermal energy refurbishment status of the Irish housing stock

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland's EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland's housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m2K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m2K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m2K. The (i) extent of thermal refurbishments and (ii) high degree of energy-efficiency improvements in Ireland contribute significantly to household energy usage per square metre being 9% below the EU 27 average in 2010, and the average energy efficiency of Irish housing having improved by over 34% between 1995 and 2011 (2.5% per annum). The distinction between the thermal efficiency of pre-thermal building regulation and post-thermal building regulation dwellings, whilst still valid, is lessening. A strong association between dwelling age and energy efficiency often-made is diminishing as retrofits continue to be carried out. The long-held view that the majority of Irish dwellings are thermally sub-standard is no longer valid.