Ms Oonagh Buckley:

It is an extremely good question. I should say that on solar in schools, it has been a slower roll-out than we intended. However, we are getting there and we do have agreement in that space now so we will be starting the solar school roll-out in conjunction with the Department of Education very soon. We are very pleased that is going to happen and it will be announced shortly.

Where we have a challenge is to get people to focus on the climate change changes they need to do alongside the other demands and pressures they have. A good example of that would be asking the Department of Education school building programme to look not just at the extra classrooms it needs, and no doubt the committee has been asking it for that separately because of all the needs and special needs and all of that, and yet at the same time the need to retrofit its buildings. It is a challenge of capacity within the organisations and within the building sector. Part of how we manage to try to drive that is to ensure there is clear ministerial responsibility for emissions ceilings, in order that people understand that they actually own the problem and are going to have to deliver on the problem.

We have some very good partners. The problem now is not convincing people; it is getting people to prioritise in the sense that they have their own priorities, which no doubt the Deputy has in this committee, and asking them why they are not doing those other things, if you know what I mean.

The other place we need to go to is to make sure we have clarity around lines of capital funding. The NDP as it currently stands, does not. It includes a huge funding stream for the SEAI schemes and a huge amount for funding for national broadband. There is less clarity, however, around funding for those public sector retrofits we are talking about, which the school scheme would come under. We have been working very closely with our colleagues at the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. The Deputy will note that the Minister secured Government approval, as part of the setting aside of additional Exchequer returns, for a scheme that will start from 2026 onwards for major public investment and for climate and nature also. It very specifically has a climate and nature element to it.

Our task now is to be shovel ready when that scheme starts to roll through. It is to get projects up to the point where they are doing that for the sorts of things we are talking about, such as the pathfinder scheme I mentioned, which is looking for additional funding from the EU to be matched, hopefully, by funding in Ireland and all that. Essentially, our challenge is to make sure people know there is a steady stream of funding that will be coming through so if they walk up to the door, they will get through it and can start the projects. The challenge is to deliver on that.