Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I confirm that I am in Leinster House. I thank the Minister for coming before us. We appreciate the Estimates and I hope they are as ambitious as the targets that we are setting out for the coming years. Deputy Jennifer Whitmore touched on the area I want to focus on, which is the retrofit scheme or warmer homes scheme. I wanted to look into the figures a little further, if that is okay. What I am very concerned about is the point the Minister made about the number of decades the scheme is proposing to take to complete the national housing stock, which I understand is about 2 million units. I went looking today for figures on the number of A rated homes in Ireland at present and, unfortunately, I could not find a figure that is recent. The Minister may have one and, if he does, it would be helpful to know what it is.

What is the percentage of homes for which the Minister expects no State assistance will be provided and, therefore, what is the number of homes where he does expect the State to assist? That will inform the committee as to the sort of level of budgets that might be required in the future. It could be 500,000 over a decade out of 2 million houses, where 10% or 20% of those householders are going to look after themselves without State assistance and the balance will probably need some form of assistance. It would be an interesting exercise for the committee to engage in, both in these Estimates and future Estimates, in order to determine the numbers we are looking at.

I do that because, obviously, we want to be as ambitious as the programme for Government, and perhaps more ambitious in terms of the various schemes that are going to assist the very constituents Deputy Jennifer Whitmore highlighted, those who have exorbitant home energy costs on limited incomes, as well as the delays that are there. I certainly appreciate the Minister mentioning the apprenticeship scheme, which is a very important step in reaching the targets we hope to achieve. The old adage about never letting a good crisis go to waste is probably very true in this instance. It will give us an opportunity to reskill a good number of people who will be interested in availing of apprenticeships in order to get into these sorts of schemes.

Is it possible for me to ask a question in regard to administration?