Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late, I was at another meeting. I thank the witnesses for their time and for the documents they provided for us.

Mr. Watt stated that we should not underplay the challenges that we face. We require changes to society on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. We need buy-in across all sectors - political, departmental and throughout the country. The committee has previously raised concerns that there is a patchwork approach to climate actions across many groups and bodies working away in their area. A more unified and co-operative approach is obviously required to deal with these issues. Is this an issue that the Departments are looking at and have they looked at examples from other states that are meeting their climate change targets to see what improvements we could make?

We had the ESRI in here at previous meetings. They informed us that 88% of houses were constructed before energy efficiency measures were put in place. We spent a lot of time teasing out the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, better energy home grants and we learned from the statistics provided that the cavity insulation grant is the most popular grant, followed by the grants for the boiler, the heating control and finally solar panels. Dealing with constituents week on week, I put that down to the cost associated with solar panels or heating controls whereas most people can make up the difference when it comes to cavity insulation, or even if they have to change their boiler. The other heating measures are a step too far for many people. I ask the witnesses to discuss that point.