Mr. Mark Griffin:

We have put in place a public sector energy efficiency action plan. It has been in place for a number of years. It was updated this year. Regarding the impact across the government sector, we have a target of 33% in energy efficiency savings by 2020. We are now at 21%. In 2015, we avoided an energy spend of €154 million in the public sector by virtue of the measures that have been put in place right across the system. What we have introduced is a fairly novel approach to the spend on energy efficiency in Departments, which are allowed to retain the savings they accrue by virtue of investing in energy efficiency measures and to invest it in other measures. That has been agreed with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We have asked each Department to appoint an officer at senior level, generally someone at assistant secretary level, to be an energy advocate within his or her Department or agency. We co-funded upgrades of ten national schools with the Department of Education and Skills in 2017, we co-funded - with the OPW - deep retrofits of ten public buildings in 2017 and we set aside funding in our own Vote in 2018 to double that. This amounts to 20 schools and 20 public buildings, and they will act as demonstrations for what can be done if the money is invested.