Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Maybe Mr. Carroll would put that together and give it to us so we can actually see what the figures are. If we are spending all that money on changing behaviour and mitigation, we must be lousy at it because we are missing our targets. It seems like a sizable amount of money. Some of it is spent on purchasing credits, although not that much. It would help if we could see the balance sheet. If they are spending money, people will want to know what they are getting for it. They have a right to see that. There is a lack of transparency and I think Mr. Carroll accepts that. A lot of schemes were promised, for example, the pay as you save scheme for utilities. That was to meet the need of people who were unable to come up with a large chunk of money by allowing them to do the retrofit themselves and then save it in their utility bills later. That was announced to great fanfare during the previous Government and it was never rolled out. I recall investment in wave energy, although it was not enough. Wavebob is one example that comes to mind. We spent something like €10 million or €12 million on that and then decided not to continue the investment. A Scottish counterpart agency took the investment we had made a stage further.

There are many positives in terms of our location and the generation of wind energy. I want to be positive about it. We could do much that is positive in this area but it seems like we are buying ourselves out of things. There is a terrible lack of leadership. It is a case of just trying to stay compliant or trying to avoid have to pay large amounts for non-compliance. Positive things could come out of that very large amount of money that was collected. We could not only meet the targets but be leaders in this area. That is really frustrating. Maybe Mr. Carroll might address some of those issues such as where the pay as you save scheme went and why we did not continue investment in wave energy, where we have a huge natural advantage. I know it is developed as wind energy but it is getting there.