Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The fund of €10 million was to support the seven projects which were approved for funding up to €77 million. The shortfall arises because some of them have been delayed in planning or have taken longer than might have been expected.

For example, the district heating scheme in Dublin has not advanced as quickly as we might have liked and neither has the use of district heating from data centre waste heat. It is not in the control of the Department as to how quickly some of those projects can be rolled out. In the context of other projects, the fast-charging electric vehicle, EV, network that the ESB is rolling out is on time and will use the full allocation.

The climate action fund it due to scale up significantly on foot of the legislation we passed in the summer. That legislation allows moneys from the NORA levy, which is a charge on all petrol and diesel sales here, to be used to build up the fund. What we hope to see is a major expansion. I am hopeful that by the end of this year we will have another round of applications seeking access to the fund. That could vary from very small to very large schemes. As was stated during the debate on the climate action legislation, which we put before the Oireachtas joint committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, there is a plan to widen the scope of applications relating to the fund. The change in the 2020 Estimate compared with that for 2019 is not a reflection of any scaling back of the fund; it is just a timing issue in the context of spending on the seven existing projects.