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

I have not seen the paper; it has not come to me yet. The Deputy is right about a deep retrofit. What we are trying to do now is move away from carrying out small works on homes to ramping up the warmer homes scheme. We have also launched a pilot deep retrofit scheme for people who are not fuel poor to look at the type and scale of work that needs to be done on individual houses so that we have a template to ramp that up. Significant capital funding is available through the national development plan to do that.

I have also been in discussions with the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, who has been engaging with his former colleagues and Teagasc with regard to how we could use the agricultural advisory network throughout the country to assist in encouraging people to carry out deep retrofits of their homes and upgrade them. We have had some engagement with the EIB about funding to see whether we could put a structure in place that would encourage people to pay as they save in respect of energy.

Only last week, I wrote to all of the commercial banks asking them to look at bringing in incentives for people who carry out energy upgrades of their homes or who buy an electric or low-emission vehicle. From 2019, the NZEB regulations in respect of new builds will mean that new homes will experience a 70% improvement in energy and carbon dioxide emission performance compared to the 2005 standards. That is a significant step forward.

The climate action fund was launched on 9 July. Yesterday was the closing date and a total of 100 applications were received. One of those applications is from An Post, which is considering rolling out charging points to post offices and where it has public car parking spaces in the State. A number of those parking spaces are accessible to the public. The intention is that the climate action fund will drive the agenda to roll out some of this infrastructure because the funding will come from motorists and that will be invested in the alternative infrastructure that is needed to drive innovation. We require primary legislation to formally establish the fund. The fund will be continually replenished over time. It will be a separate fund that will be drawn down from through proposals and bids. In the short term, the intention is to ensure we can start to invest immediately in the building and upgrading of infrastructure. We have a comprehensive network but we need to upgrade it so that we cab gave timely repairs and more fast chargers available at locations. That is part of the discussions that have been ongoing between this company in the US and the ESB.