Dublin couple threatened with fine if they do not remove external home insulation
By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA
A Bill will give “national clarity” on whether planning permission is needed to install external wall insulation on homes, a TD has said.
Legislation has been drafted by People Before Profit-Solidarity in response to the case of a west Dublin couple who have been threatened with a fine if they do not remove external insulation from their home.
Clive and Samantha Ryan began looking at insulating their Kilnamanagh home, built in 1974, in March 2018.
They spent €16,000 installing an external ‘wrap around’ insulation on their house, using an Sustainable Energy Authority-approved builder.
“Our bills were very, very high, and we needed to change something,” Samantha Ryan said.
Mr Ryan said: “To find out six years later, getting four letters in the door to say we need to take it down, was a bit of a shock to the system.”
The couple also received a €4,000 grant, approved by the council, towards the works and do not understand why planning permission requirements were not mentioned at that stage.
They have submitted their third application for retention.
Mr Ryan said if he knew the difficulties they would face, he would never have gone ahead with the work.
“I would have just kept my heating on for the whole day, which we were doing, where now we’re not.
“I’d love to say I recommend it to everyone. It’s brilliant. But to go through this to get it done, it’s not for me. It’s put me off getting solar panels, that was our next step.”
It is understood that the local authority, South Dublin County Council, has said there is no clarity in what external insulation cases planning permission is needed.
People Before Profit has drafted the “very simple” two-page Planning And Development (Exempted Development – External Wall Insulation) Bill, to help avoid the need for planning permission if certain base criteria are met.
It proposes an exemption from planning permission for external wall insulation except in some cases, such as where it is a protected structure and it is located in an architectural conservation area.
People Before Profit councillor Jess Spear said she was contacted by the Ryans in January and said the situation seemed “mad to me in a climate emergency”.
“It seemed to me this family had done everything right, but somehow were being punished.”
She added: “The council had basically told me, there is not real clarity on this. They couldn’t say yes or no – you had to get planning permission.”
“The idea that you would face thousands of euros in fines or potential imprisonment for simply getting external wall insulation on your house is obviously outrageous,” TD Paul Murphy said.
He said there was nothing extraordinary about the insulation, and the couple said there are 13 other houses like theirs.
“There is a flaw here, and it’s a flaw in the legislation which is that, at the moment, external insulation is not excluded from the need for planning permission as a rule,” he said.
He said there is “inconsistency across the country” because different councils may choose to apply the legislation differently.
“If you want to go and get solar panels at the moment, as long as you do it within certain rules that are set out in regulations – for example, there has to be a gap between the edge of the roof and solar panels, there’s a limit in terms of the number of solar panels and so on – but as long as you do it within certain rules, you can be very, very confident that there’s no requirement before planning permission.
“Effectively, exactly the same thing now needs to happen for external wall insulation.”
He said the Bill being proposed is a “very, very simple Bill” that will hopefully prevent people from being discouraged from getting external insulation.
“So we need national clarity to say ‘this Government encourages people to get external wall insulation, and therefore it is exempted’, and have that clarity and simplicity for people.”
South Dublin County Council has been contacted for comment.