Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Retrofitting has been flagged as a large part of the just transition. A sum of €20 million was announced for it this week. I calculate that at €40,000 per house, and it could cost much more for some houses, it would deep retrofit 500 homes. Will the SEAI comment on that?

I am glad to hear that Mount Lucas will be the centre of the universe and Laois and Offaly ETB is in the middle of it. It has done a lot of work with training and upskilling people.

Ms Delaney from the county council might answer my next question on the rewetting of bogs. The carbon sinks are an important use. We must regenerate those carbon sinks and rewet the bogs. Is the council looking at any other use? There can only be so many Lough Booras and tourist attractions, and I have been down to Lough Boora several times. Is there any other purpose for those bogs, economic or otherwise?

Another question for Ms Delaney relates to Laois and Coolnamona. There has been no just transition whatever in Laois. I do not know if anyone from Laois is on the transition team. I worked on it, and there were up to 300 of us there at one time. We knew it would come to an end some day, and that has accelerated, but there are still workers there, and many have lost their jobs in recent years. Will Coolnamona be included?

We have argued for years that we need to create a biomass supply chain. Even if only Edenderry is left, although I think the other two power stations should be left standing and brought back into use for 100% biomass, because when there is no sun shining and no wind blowing, we will need dispatchable power, as we cannot just rely on nuclear power from England the whole time, are there any moves afoot to put in place a substantial supply chain of biomass?