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

There are plans to scale it up in a variety of ways. I refer, for example, to the action being taken in the midlands to deliver the just transition fund. The €6 million fund is divided into two phases. This year there was a series of projects. Typically, smaller projects were agreed and supported for funding in September. We expect to see a second round of larger projects agreed in the coming weeks and the funding allocated before the end of the year, subject to everyone coming back in time. It is a bureaucratic process but we are hopeful of getting the funding out to those various projects.

There are a variety of other initiatives that are related but not covered for in this budget. I had a useful meeting with Bord na Móna earlier this week. We are considering a major expansion in funding for Bord na Móna to rewet bogs and, in that process, to retain many of the jobs that may otherwise have been lost from the peat harvesting area. There is a real potential to switch the skills Bord na Móna has in managing and extracting peat from bogs to be used in the storing of carbon, stopping the release of it, at real scale at a multiple of the funding of what we are considering here and in that way to avoid any further job losses that people feared. First things first, however. The Department has to complete the process of assessing and awarding the projects under this call for proposals. That will be done within a short number of weeks. We expect the relevant projects to be approved and funding heading in that direction before the end of the year.