Mr. Brian Carroll:

Again, the national development plan commits to a step-up in sustainable travel measures, including a comprehensive cycling and walking network for metropolitan areas and expanded greenways. That is in the national development plan.

The transition to low-emissions buses includes electric buses for the urban public bus fleet. A commitment to no diesel-only buses to be purchased from 1 July 2019 is in the national development plan. Decarbonising our public transport is important in cities for air quality reasons and to bring about the necessary modal shift. The scale of the challenges are relevant since 4% of our transport emissions come from public passenger journeys while over 50% come from private car journeys. That is a where one big issue lies.

I fully agree with Deputy Ryan on retro-fitting of houses. The figure of 45,000 per annum from 2021 to 2030 represents approximately one third of the stock of existing houses. Clearly, it is not all about Exchequer spend. Taxation has a role as does regulation, but we have an existing stock of houses that are going to exist for a long time and they need to be dealt with. Earlier I referred to 500,000 one-off houses that are remote from the gas network and that burn fossil fuels for heat. Some 170,000 of these are to be transitioned over the decade. That represents one third of the one-off houses that are remote from the grid.

I believe these are significant commitments and step-ups in the national development plan. Earlier, I referred to the national energy and climate plan – I accept that we have a series of different plans, but the nature of mitigation policy is that as time passes and technologies change, we have to constantly add to policy. That is not going to change.

One thing raised by one of the Deputies was the need for Departments to be talking to one another. We have the structure in place now through the high-level steering group chaired by the Minister that brings all the Departments together. Sitting under that we have the technical research and modelling group. This is a research group that brings in Departments agencies and the likes of the universities to give the sort of analysis we need to choose cost-effective and appropriate policies. I will pass over to my colleague to address the question on data centres.