Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Secretaries General and their colleagues. I have a number of questions for each group. Mr. Moran mentioned the incentives already in place and stated there are enough incentives at present. There has to be behavioural change in the climate discussion and debate and for this to happen we must have more incentives. Has the Department looked at other incentives such as tax credits? We have tax credits in a number of areas throughout the system.

Has the idea of a tax credit for doing X, Y or Z been looked at as an incentive in that regard? There has been a lot of talk in different areas of late about low-cost loans. The cost of refurbishing a house to bring it up to whatever standard is required is going to cost a lot of money. If an analysis on the figures was done, it might cost €50 billion over a period of time to bring the entire housing stock in the country up to a standard that would be required to be carbon-efficient, which is a lot of money. The State is never going to be in a position to do this for everybody. We have had low-cost loans from a Brexit point of view and in different sectors in recent times. Has that been looked at?

In general, there must be more carrot than stick in the whole debate. That has to be the whole selling point. The communications strategy in both Departments is crucial. In terms of selling the message of what is coming down the line, the consequences and implications of it and what it is going to cost - Mr. Watt referenced earlier the costs, differences and so on - this has to be done in a language that everybody understands. If we do not do that, we are losing the battle straight away. It would seem that most of the time, we are playing catch-up and it is a fire-fighting process. A very straightforward communications strategy needs to be developed. What communications strategy do both Departments have in place?

In his opening statement Mr. Watt stated that the evidence suggests that reductions in emissions on the scale required will involve winners and losses and have distributional consequences for society. This is obvious. Has an analysis been done in Mr. Watt's Department of the winners and losers and the potential costs involved?