Dr. Brian Motherway:

I will start with the questions asked by Deputy Michael Moynihan about our grant schemes and retrofitting which are related to the question asked by Deputy John O'Mahony. Under the Better Energy Homes scheme, grants have been provided for approximately 150,000 homes in the past three year, creating significant employment and benefits. We acknowledge that with such a large scheme, there will always be cases where people believe the rules are unclear or cause difficulties for either contractors or homeowners.

With regard to contractors, in disbursing public funds the scheme gives rise to a number of issues around the governance of funding, financial management and quality of work which attach a level of bureaucracy to the scheme. We try to minimise this to make the process an easy experience for both the contractor and the homeowner. However, we focus on the quality of work done and the financial probity of the contractors. Where there are specific issues, we always try to deal with them to make the scheme accessible to small companies, as well as larger ones, as far as we can. Sometimes larger companies find it easier to meet our requirements in terms of financial management simply because they are larger. However, we try to work with smaller companies because we realise they are an important part of this sector. We are always happy to talk to specific companies that wish to talk to us or discuss issues such as how we can help them to participate within the overall governance rules.