Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 November 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Annual Report of the Accounts of the Public Services
Chapter 9 - Greenhouse Gas-Related Financial Transactions: Discussion (Resumed)

9:00 am

Photo of Kate O'ConnellKate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My issue with this is that it is very difficult to bring normal people with one. I am referring to everyday people eating, dressing themselves to stay warm and going places. It is very difficult to bring people with one if there is a possibility that a company, through whatever it is producing, can pollute continually and buy its way out. Deputy Cullinane mentioned somewhere in Waterford the last time. There are those who do not have the capacity to change their behaviour because there is no alternative available to them. It is going to be very difficult to bring people with us. The whole point is carbon reduction and decarbonisation. People get that because it is not that complicated. If the Department is telling people to invest in and retrofit their homes, walk to work or buy an electric car while big industry is pumping out carbon, albeit in a way that it is balancing out somewhere else globally, it will be very hard to sell to average people just trying to go about their daily lives. There is not so much choice available to average people.

With regard to the retrofitting, the scene in an urban area is completely different from that in a rural area. I am originally from a very rural part of Ireland. There are many people in homes around my family home that would have regarded the getting in of oil-based central heating as being progressive recent years. They would have moved from turf or wood. I refer to heavy-duty fossil fuel burning. I just do not see how we can convince somebody who is perhaps of retirement age and who might be considering her life expectancy and saying she could be around for another week or 30 years. The position is very different in terms of getting loans to retrofit homes. With regard to the suitability of many rural dwellings, many have lime-based mortar and stone bases that cannot be wrapped in insulation. There are considerable barriers if those in rural Ireland are to apply the same rules as would apply in urban Ireland. Insulation pads cannot just be put on the outside and inside of stone walls. Heat pumps cost a huge amount of money and require maintenance every year. I just cannot see how older people would buy into the idea of investing in this. Practically, the Department is missing a trick here. I can understand the thinking on modern homes and people building new homes but I believe older people in rural areas with homes that will never be suited to standard retrofitting or standard heat pumps will be very much left behind because there is nothing they can do - other than knock the house and start again - to change their behaviour and reduce their bills.

With regard to the increase in the fuel allowance to mitigate against the carbon tax, I agree with Deputy Cullinane. We are back to the point I made at the start. We have to be reducing carbon emissions. If we are subventing the use of carbon to balance against tax, it seems like a style of economics equivalent to moving deckchairs around the Titanic.

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