Dr. Rory O'Donnell:

It depends on what front the Deputy is thinking. Schemes which we strongly endorse, such as the green schools initiative, can only work if they involve communities. While there is a cost involved, significant amounts of public money are not required. The major action is that to which I referred earlier, namely, retrofit, in respect of which we all face a tricky challenge. The public system has relied on a grant based scheme to incentivise retrofit and it has delivered significantly. However, the current public finance crisis dictates a different approach now. No one knows exactly what will be achieved through a pay-as-you-save scheme, which would require no upfront money from the household but would still yield the savings, energy and otherwise. That is the key idea everyone is keen to explore. Nobody is foolish enough to claim that they have cracked what that looks like. The Government has announced its intention to explore this vigorously in the next year. Our progress in retrofit will slow down dramatically in the next year or so given the switch from a funded to a private regime.