Facing the challenge of how to bring a Victorian home with damp old brick walls up to a modern low energy standard, architect Brendan O’Connor deployed an innovative solution: build entirely new and superinsulated timber frame walls within the old structure.

A new one-day conference set to be held in Dublin next month will look at the twin challenges of solving Ireland's housing crisis with rapid-build construction, while at the same time meeting new standards for nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs).

Rising from the shell of the stalled riverside headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, Ireland’s financial regulator could be accused of insensitivity for choosing as its new home a site that became a toxic symbol of the banking crisis, but the building is not without virtue: it comfortably surpasses the proposed nearly zero energy building standard while achieving the onerous Breeam ‘Outstanding’ rating for sustainability.

Flynn Heat Recovery Systems has just completed the installation of 93 Zehnder passive-certified MVHR units in a housing scheme under development by SDR Group at Aikens village, Stepaside, Co Dublin.

Highway Wholesalers, the Waterford-based supplier of kitchen, bathroom and water treatment appliances, will have the Recoup wastewater heat recovery system on display at the Energy Show in Dublin next week.

Passive House Plus analyses Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's plan to make the passive house standard mandatory for all new buildings in the district. 

The majority of homes in Dublin city have a Building Energy Rating (BER) of D1 or lower, according to figures released by Dublin’s energy agency Codema.

AIB has announced the launched of a €350m “new homes development fund” that it says will support the construction of new homes in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The bank is inviting applications from “borrowers who can demonstrate prior experience in residential development”.

Wolfgang Feist, one of the creators of the passive house concept and a founder and director of the Passive House Institute, will speak in Dublin on 25 October at the 2013 See The Light conference.

The Central Bank's reported €8m bid for the site on which the defunct Anglo Irish Bank's ghost HQ sits may be double the market value, it has been claimed.

Architect Paschal Mahoney – who is heading up the innovative Trees on the Quays proposal to create a landmark vertical park from the iconic concrete shell for the Anglo HQ – had an independent valuation of the site done as part of a proposal to turn the defunct structure into a symbol and catalyst of Ireland's regeneration.

"I've heard from several sources that people have valued it and the price the Central Bank are offering may be about twice the actual value," Mahoney told Construct Ireland. "We've had it independently valued too. The price being offered is almost twice what the valuers have told us its worth. The taxpayer would be paying €8m for something we already own."

A recent study undertaken by Dublin City Council could serve to shatter many commonly held misconceptions about how existing buildings can perform when compared to new build, even simply just in terms of running costs.

The Daintree Building is a mixed-use, sustainable urban building on Pleasant’s Place, just off Camden St. Dublin , writes Brian O’Brien of Solearth Architects. Conceived in 1999 it has been a long development process—but by late September Daintree should be open for business and the ever innovative Daintree (Paper Co) Ltd will have a new home, one appropriate to the delightfulness of their products and their focus on nature’s generosity for their raw materials.