Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. I had to go to the Dáil for Questions to the Taoiseach and am glad to come back in on this. I have a few questions about energy. How is the €500 million climate fund being managed? What are the timelines for spending it? How does it fit into the budget process? There is a risk that in response to just about everything the Minister asks for, the Minister for Finance will say that it will come from the climate fund. How does that integrate with the standard budget process?

With regard to EVs, at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Climate Action last week, the ESB said that we should have a public fund for fast-charging points in recognition that of the problem in this regard. If two or three charging points are installed in car parks in every hospital, Garda station, library, council office, primary healthcare centre or Department building, there would be a significant network. Most of the public car parking in Dublin city centre comprises public service car parking places. We got a sense that approximately €25 million would be needed for an immediate quick injection of charging points. I am interested in whether the Minister is considering that. How do we deal with the legacy investment? We made an investment of approximately €25 million ten years ago. What happens to that? Is it written off? Is it just transferred to the ESB as its asset and the new CRU process continues?

In respect of the deep retrofit programme, is it not time to make a switch and say that we will no longer do small jobs? There is a risk that if we do a small job and come back five years later believing that we need a bigger job, it will be harder to do. Perhaps the Minister would be correct to say at this point that the axe will fall and that from hereon, they will all be big jobs; with the financing securitised and the construction standardised in order that contractors can do 100 or 500 jobs. Then we will get the contractors to engage. Surely now is the time to do that. The scale is so significant that it must involve retrofitting every house. To make that happen, perhaps it is time to switch to deep retrofitting everything.

Following on from the meeting of the joint committee last week, we were told by the Secretary General that in the next day or two, we would have a copy of the consultation paper the Minister is presenting on the national energy and climate plan. Could we get that in advance of the committee's meeting on Thursday?