Professor Frank Convery:

I will address the Senator's point on agriculture.

The first step in having an effective policy is to have good and valid information. Individual farmers literally do not know what their environmental performance is. Obviously, they know what their commercial performance is but not their environmental performance as individuals. That is why the Glanbia initiative is so important and it is the first big step. For policy to evolve, the first step is to have information, which is why the energy certification system is so important. For the first time we know how efficient buildings are, although there are question marks over some systems. The next question is how to improve a rating to move from an E rating to a D rating. My first priority would be to have good information in order that when one interviews specialists, one has information that is real, not anecdotal.

We all know that there is a big problem with jargon in discussing energy efficiency. The pay-off is terrific in one's own house, building and so on. However, there are what economists call transaction costs. One must find somebody to give the information, and then he or she comes and messes up the house. There are costs that are not counted in the actual cost. The movement towards overcoming this is strongly community-based but more particular to urban settings. If one lives in a suburb with 200 houses that are pretty much identical, the cost of having all of them done at the same time will be half that in an area in which I carry out one job this month and somebody returns six months later to do it in the house next door. It is important to make things as easy as possible for community-driven efficiency schemes. The units are so small that the collective approach makes it enormously valuable. I have promoted the radical idea of having an opt-out rather than an opt-in model, such that one would have to say, "I do not want my house to be upgraded." There are financial models available, about which Dr. Brian Motherway can tell the committee because he is the next delegate. The premise is that one pays for a retrofit out of the savings made in one's bill. The cost can be dramatically reduced if one achieves economies of scale. Pushing that line is really important.

I wish to return to the issue of targets. I do not want to appear to be against ambition and doing much better than the European target. It would only make sense to take that route if there was a European pay-off. It would make sense if, for example, we could multiply it to have a European policy. As it happens, we have the most demanding targets in Europe. Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg are three of 27 member states which have a minus 20% obligation. Ireland already has a tough goal, but I do not want what I am saying to inhibit or encourage us from doing better.

I am chairman of PublicPolicy.ie,an Atlantic Philanthropies funded think-tank. The only reason we exist is Mr. Feeney asked us to set up the think-tank to help the policy system to understand its choices and how it was doing. We are delighted to be invited to come here, but ours is a resource that is freely available online. All one has to do is Google the words "public policy" and anyone can see what we are up to.

Similarly, wearing my UCD and universities hat, the universities are generally under-utilised, even though they have a lot of capacity. I would like the committee to challenge us to be better. We want to give it whatever support we can.