Kingspan Century, Europe’s largest timber frame home manufacturer,
today called on the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche TD, to
follow the lead of Fingal County Council and force the construction
industry to design greener homes. Press Release

Wednesday, November 1st 2006.

Kingspan Century Chief Executive Gerry McCaughey said: "The energy efficiency standards in the Irish building regulations are joke, and the full impact of climate change, as outlined in the British Government’s Stern report, should bring the Irish Government to its senses."

"Already this week EU Environment Commissioner Dimas has severely criticised the Irish Government’s very poor performance on reaching our targets under the Kyoto Protocol," he added.

"For years the Government has knowingly allowed hundreds of thousands of homes to be built to low energy efficiency standards, and the ridiculous situation still exists that different energy standards apply to different methods of construction," he said.

"The Government is so out of touch with this issue that it has been bypassed by a local authority. We now have the ridiculous situation where the energy standards set by Fingal County Council are, in some cases, three times higher than the national standard," said McCaughey.

"You can see there is a total lack of political will by the Government on the issue when a pioneering move by a small number of Green Party councillors on Fingal County Council has made their energy efficiency standards much more superior to the National Standards."

"The political leadership shown by Fingal Country Council is causing a mini-revolution at local authority level and councils want to follow the example, but are receiving little support or encouragement from the Government," he said.

"Minister Roche should also look to Britain, where Housing Minister Yvette Cooper is considering radical policy initiatives including:
regulations to require planners and builders to take account of climate change, as well as, tough new planning guidelines which will require large housing estates to be sustainable, and, in the long term, carbon neutral," he concluded.

Kingspan Century was established in 1990. It is the biggest timber-frame manufacturing company in Europe. The company currently employs 500 in total in plants in Dungarvan, Monaghan, Longford, Cardiff, Newcastle and a sales and engineering office in London. Kingspan Century is part of the Kingspan Group PLC. www.century.ie <http://www.century.ie/ >

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