Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If tomorrow morning we had the capacity and the funding to replace every single oil-fired central heating system with heat pumps, people would refuse to put them in because they would be afraid of the technology, wondering whether it would fail or it would work, whether it would keep the house as warm as it should be, whether they could rely on the contractor putting it in and whether the contractor would be available if it broke down in a couple of years time. We need someone to certify that it is reliable and sustainable technology.

One of the big concerns about large-scale biomass has been whether we will get the woodchip needed to run those burners if we put the capital investment in at the start. The growing of miscanthus around the country was an unmitigated disaster. There is plenty of elephant grass at the moment. It is a bit like the Christmas tree market some years ago. We need to make sure people invest in the right technology. At the national economic dialogue we said we needed the equivalent of a Teagasc - a respected, State-supported agency that can certify that a particular technology works and will be beneficial to people - for energy efficiency. That is the first challenge, in tandem with making the capital investment. While we do need significant capital investment and a radical change in the short term on that, we need to get the basics right to make sure that when we roll something out on a large scale we have the level of uptake required to make that impact.