Dr. Brian Motherway:

I will answer the questions that pertain to us. I thank Deputy Murphy for the questions. The pay-as-you-save scheme was discussed in the era of the last Government. Obviously, the timing is a policy matter but as far as I am aware it became policy formally in the programme for Government of the current Government, which set out the timeframe of its introduction by the end of 2013. This remains the timeframe we are working to.

Just a few weeks ago, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources formally established the national co-ordination group for the design and delivery of the scheme. The group is working now on the various legal, billing and detailed design questions. It falls under the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

The document the Deputy is referring to is the recent paper from the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on the green economy which highlighted a number of initiatives across a number of Departments. We work under Deputy Rabbitte's Department on the development of the pay-as-you-save scheme.

I acknowledge that the timeframe for the pilot programme for better energy communities was tight this year. It was a small pilot where we found ourselves, I suppose for budgetary reasons, able to free up enough money to do a pilot in the second half of the year, acknowledging that it would bar the participation of some projects that would take a longer time than that. We were pleasantly surprised to get 47 applications, even in the tight timeframe, of which 18 have been funded. This has taught us enough about the potential of that sector to continue the programme on a more rational and reasonable timeframe next year, now that we know that taking a communities approach does seem to unlock participation and new opportunities that we have not seen through the other programmes. We are hopeful we can continue that initiative and allow access to projects that would take a longer timeframe.