FixMyBER

Guide · Boiler replacement · Checked 3 Oct 2026

There is no grant for a new boiler; €2,000 comes with a heat pump

SEAI pays nothing toward a new oil or gas boiler: since 1 January 2025 the law bars public money for one. You can still get €700 for heating controls, with or without a new boiler. When a heat pump replaces the boiler, the €2,000 boiler scrappage grant comes with it.

A new white Worcester wall-hung gas boiler fitted in an alcove beside the gas meter, in a room stripped back for a kitchen refit with floorboards lifted and copper pipes exposed.

A wall-hung gas boiler, newly fitted during a kitchen refit. There is no SEAI grant toward one.

New Kitchen (6130290558) · marsupium photography · CC BY-SA 2.0

See your grants for a heat pump, and what you’d pay

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Updated · grants checked · How we know · Corrections

Where this sits · the grant steps

Every SEAI grant runs the same six steps. SEAI won't pay for work that starts before it approves.

  1. Assessa BER, or a home energy assessment
  2. Applyonline, before any work starts
  3. ApproveSEAI's offer lasts 8 months
  4. Worksby an SEAI-registered contractor
  5. Claimpost-works BER and forms
  6. Paid4–6 weeks after complete paperwork
  1. The idea behind itApply, approve, works and payment are different steps
  2. You are hereBoiler replacement
  3. Next questionWhat's the boiler scrappage grant?

The short answer: no

SEAI do not grant-aid a new or replacement gas or oil boiler. Not a high-efficiency one, not a condensing one, not in an emergency. SEAI say it in those words on their own page.

This is not a policy SEAI can bend. Since 1 January 2025, Irish law forbids public bodies from paying anything toward installing a stand-alone fossil-fuel boiler. The regulations came in at the end of 2024 to give effect to an EU directive.

European Union (Energy Performance of Buildings) Regulations 2024, S.I. No. 749/2024, signed 19 December 2024, transposing Article 17(15) of Directive (EU) 2024/1275: from 1 January 2025 public bodies shall not provide financial incentives for the installation of stand-alone boilers powered by fossil fuels. Cited in a Dáil written answer of 22 January 2025.

You can still buy a boiler and still fit one. Nothing stops you. The State simply will not help you pay for it.

What a new boiler fixes, and what it does not — what a fresh boiler changes in the house, and when it is still the right call.

There is no SEAI register of boiler installers, so there is nobody for us to list and no picker on this page — for a boiler you are looking for a Registered Gas Installer or an OFTEC technician, not an SEAI contractor.

What you can still get

Heating controls — €700. This is the one that surprises people: you can claim it with or without a new boiler. Better controls — a room thermostat, zoned heating, a timer that actually works — cut what a boiler burns without touching the boiler itself. The home must have been built and lived in before 2011. You cannot claim it if you are applying for, or have already had, a heat pump grant. Amounts last checked 2026-10-03.

Repairs and the rest of the system. Grants stay available for repairing an existing boiler and for radiators, pipework and oil tanks, whether or not they are connected to a fossil-fuel boiler.

A heat pump instead — up to €10,500 for the unit in a house, plus €1,000 to €2,000 toward the pipes and radiators it needs, plus the €2,000 boiler scrappage grant for taking the old boiler out. Stacked, that is the largest grant on offer for anything.

The boiler scrappage grant is not for a new boiler. The Government approved it on 29 September 2026, and SEAI pays it only as part of the heat pump grant. The boiler scrappage grant sets out the rules in SEAI's words.

There is also no VAT on heat pump installation, and has not been since 1 January 2025, provided it is one contract and one invoice.

If your boiler has just died

That is the hard case, and the honest advice is not "get a heat pump" — it is this:

  1. Get it looked at properly. A repair is grant-eligible where a replacement is not, and a twelve-year-old boiler with a failed part is often worth fixing.
  2. If it has to be replaced, you are paying for it. Take the heating controls grant at the same time; the work is already open.
  3. Do not let the boiler decide the next twenty years. A heat pump needs a house that holds heat, which usually means insulation first — and that is not a decision to make in a cold week in January. Fix the heat now, plan the change properly.

If the house is already well insulated, that is different: check the heat-loss test before you spend money on a boiler you may replace again in five years.

The "2040 boiler ban" — what the law actually says

You will read that fossil-fuel boilers are banned in Ireland from 2040. We read the directive; that is not what it says.

Three separate things get run together:

  • Binding, and already in force. No public money toward installing a stand-alone fossil-fuel boiler, from 1 January 2025.
  • An aspiration. Member States "shall strive" to replace stand-alone fossil-fuel boilers in existing buildings. Strive, not shall.
  • A reporting template. The only place 2040 appears is a list of what national renovation plans must describe — phasing out fossil fuels "with a view to" a complete phase-out of fossil-fuel boilers by 2040. There is no operative article banning them.

New homes are a different story, and it is already done. Building standards introduced in 2019 made fossil-fuel boilers impractical in new dwellings, and by 2023 fewer than 5% of new homes got one, against 79% a decade earlier. That was achieved by a performance standard, not a prohibition.

No date has been set after which you may not replace a broken boiler in an existing home. Building regulations set minimum efficiencies for replacement boilers, which rather assumes they remain legal.

How we know

Sources

  1. SEAI, Support for individual grants, checked 3 Oct 2026
  2. SEAI, Heating upgrade grants (controls), read 8 Oct 2026
  3. SEAI, Heat pump systems grant, read 10 Oct 2026
  4. Houses of the Oireachtas, 768, checked 3 Oct 2026
  5. EUR-Lex, HTML, checked 3 Oct 2026

Found a mistake? Every fix is dated on Corrections. Method in full: How we know.

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Updated · grants checked · How we know · Corrections