Ms Anna Heussaff:

It is helpful to hear Mr. Dolan make these points. On the one hand we have the Energy in Education programme which was established by the Department and the SEAI, and on the other is Green-Schools, which is not funded by the Department. Our sense is that the policy and its implementation are falling in a gap between the two programmes. The Energy in Education programme is proceeding, but - this is not a criticism of the SEAI, as it may be short of resources, with three people at most working on its entire public sector programme, of which education is only a small part - it takes a long time to publish any data, and we are still waiting for 2011 data, never mind data from 2012 or 2013. I am anxious about how long it might take it to roll out monitoring and reporting by schools. It is good to have guidance available, but if there is no plan for how many schools will be engaged over a particular period of time, we will be here in three or six years stating that it is a pity we did not get this done faster.

Green-Schools has an infrastructure for engagement and relationship with schools which seems to be considerably more extensive. Proposals have been made to make its programme more structured and medium-term, but these have not happened either. Our concern is that the opportunity for savings is falling between these two stools and is not being realised.