22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
The grant questions every Irish insulation enquiry starts with
Nobody wakes up wanting cavity wall insulation. They want a warmer house and a smaller bill, they discover there is a grant, they half understand it, and then they start ringing contractors. By the time they reach you they have usually read three pages and formed two misconceptions.
Clarification beats persuasion
The enquiry does not need convincing that insulation is worthwhile — they arrived believing it. What they need is to understand which grant applies to their house, what they pay up front and what comes back.
Contractors who lead with that close considerably more surveys than those who lead with technical specification, because they are answering the question actually being asked.
Eligibility belongs in the form
Grant eligibility turns on the property — its age, its construction, whether work has already been done. An enquiry from a house that does not qualify costs you a survey and produces nothing.
Three questions in the form remove most of those before anyone travels, and none of them deter a genuine enquiry.
What the one-stop-shop route changed
The registered one-stop-shop model reshaped this market by offering homeowners a managed deeper retrofit. It is attractive, and it takes work that used to go to single-measure contractors.
Competing with it on scope is a losing move for most contractors. Competing on being the fastest, simplest route to the single measure somebody wants this month is not, and there is a great deal of that demand.
When to spend
Insulation enquiries follow the heating bill. There is a sharp rise from October and a long quiet stretch through summer.
Budget weighted to the cold months produces materially cheaper enquiries than the same money spread evenly, because you are advertising while the problem is being felt rather than remembered.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.