Building Energy Rating (BER) In Ireland

[Dominick Penny]

Public awareness of the Building Energy Rating (BER) requirement is
gradually increasing throughout the Republic of Ireland 3 weeks
after legislation was introduced requiring any home offered for sale
or rent to have a BER certificate. Property agents in Dublin City
Centre have reported a steady trickle of inquiries about BER
assessment and its necessity in home selling transactions. This is in
spite of the severe economic downturn in the country having a
significant impact on the number of property transactions as well as
January being a traditionally slow month for house sales. The BER
scheme has featured on television ads and received prominence on
popular talk-shows on national broadcaster RTE. However, Sustainable
Energy Ireland (SEI), the body charged with administrating the program
still has a lot of work to do to inform the general public that BER
certification is a necessity for home sales, not an option.
The BER scheme, introduced to increase public awareness of home energy
use and costs and to ultimately aid in the reduction of home energy
waste has not escaped criticism however.  An article in the Irish
Sunday Times on January 11th drew attention to the work performed by 3
separate energy rating companies and their preliminary results noting
that 3 different energy ratings for the same home were produced. The
values ranged from an E2 rating to as low as a D2 rating. The article
took this as evidence that the BER testing procedure was flawed and
that the results produced should be viewed with skepticism. The
article does draw attention to comments by a SEI spokesman who states
that the preliminary ratings were not submitted to the SEI for
validation and therefore any comparison between ratings is flawed.
Upon submission, each BER is subject to a series of validation checks.
These checks could easily have ironed out any inconsistencies between
the different ratings submitted. This point is not given due
prominence in the article.

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