Professor John FitzGerald:

This has come up since the council considered it. My personal view is the money for farmers as is the case of all compensation it must be temporary. It is a transitional payment. It is not €800 million a year for the future whereas there is a very substantial ramping up of investment, much of it in housing. However, it makes sense to use the money to help farmers transition out of sectors that are very badly affected, such as beef, into other sectors.

I would not write off all of that €800 million as being non-climate sensitive. It is temporary. Obviously, I would have liked there to have been more. My concern is that it is difficult to identify in the investment. If one thinks about the investment in housing, it is in local authority housing or social housing where all the houses have a BER of A. It is not like the cost of retrofitting but embedded in that is a significant amount of additional expenditure, which is related to moving the BER from, let us say, C to A. It is very difficult to identify what relates to climate change in the investment programme. Is climate change the reason for much of the investment in public transport? It is good for climate change but it is being done to get people from A to B because of congestion. It is difficult to break down, but it would be a help if the Government did provide a breakdown. It would exaggerate the environmental benefits out of the investment programme.