Mr. Robert Watt:

We have discussed some of these issues already so I apologise if I go over old ground again.

On insulation, there is a big question over whether people have the right incentives to insulate. There is also a lot of hassle involved in doing it and then there is the financial issue. A household might think it has a strong incentive to retrofit but it might not have access to the financing. SEAI could play a role there and we mentioned the potential for low cost loans earlier. The incentives, the hassle factor and the funding are different issues which might prevent people from insulating.

As the Deputy is aware, it is an enormous challenge and it will take a generation to retrofit homes. It is interesting to see the different types of options that people go with. I know that SEAI is doing a lot of work to try to figure out what is working and what is not, why is there a variability in take-up among different income groups and what is causing that. There is much work to be done there which will feed into policy in the future.

On climate change, we set out that there are governance challenges and a principal agent problem that we face and that other countries face. The problem is that the Minister is responsible for delivering the targets but the levers are with a whole variety of other Departments and agencies. Trying to have that co-ordinated approach is the job of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment but there is an issue over which mechanism that should happen through. There is a Cabinet committee on climate change and there is a senior officials' group but are they operating to the best of their capabilities and there is the question of whether it could be done differently. We have an open mind on that. I mentioned in my remarks that some countries have mandated targets. For example, sector X would be mandated to deliver on a certain target and that would then be driven from the centre. This is something that we must look at and there are certainly ways that we can improve the co-ordination challenge that exists.