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

I guess the Deputy has a similar assessment of the Department. For any Minister, it is a relay race, you take the baton and then pass it on to someone else. I was very glad to take the baton from Deputy Bruton who did good work in the Department.

The KPIs need to be updated. The climate action plan to be published this summer will update the plan Deputy Bruton published in 2019 and will facilitate the meeting of higher Government targets outlined in the latter. We have to put the legislation in place first and then a range of initiatives will follow. What we are, in this country and across the world, is hugely challenging. I think I heard this morning that the UK Government intends to pursue a 78% reduction in emissions by 2035. The UK has a head start because it has already delivered a lot of emissions reductions, such as switching away from coal. Nevertheless, that new target is very ambitious. Similarly, I recall reading earlier in the week that the US is going carbon neutral in its energy system, I presume in electricity generation, by 2035. Anyone who knows the size of the existing American fossil fuel power generation system knows that it is beyond compare. What the US is seeking to do is what is needed because the science says we have to do it. What we are doing is very ambitious, massively significant and will be a real challenge but it is in line with what countries similar to Ireland are doing. It will give rise to a better economy and deliver real benefits. For example, it will deliver competitive economic benefits, social benefits and better air quality, as well as climate benefits.

On the additional ambition in respect of retrofitting, I remember that at the previous joint committee there was a certain amount of competition as we revved up over how many houses could be retrofitted in a year. Someone would say they could do 60,000 and the next person would say 70,000. Before we knew it, we were doing 100,000 houses a year. The truth is that it is not that easy. It is 100,000 families and 100,000 builders. If we can complete 50,000 houses, on average, over the ten years, it would be about right in terms of our capabilities. However, we can be more ambitious in other ways. Deputy Bruton launched an initiative for district heating - a project at Poolbeg financed under the previous climate fund - whereby waste heat is taken from the incinerator. This project will deliver in the region of 90 MW of heat, which is not insignificant. That sort of project and a whole range of others will be key.

The reason I mention it is that we can bring that into new houses such as the new Poolbeg strategic development zone, SDZ, but we can bring it to the social housing apartments in Ringsend, at Pearse Street and can do it quickly. We can also bring it to all of the buildings along the docks on the north and south quays to the new buildings that are being designed and built district-heating-ready. I would not want to stop there and would want us to go into Georgian Dublin and the city centre of Dublin where those houses are not suited. These are not houses that we will look to retrofit as it is very difficult to do, is very expensive and changes the character. Why not, in a far more effective way, do what they have just started to do in Amsterdam and what they have been doing for decades in Denmark and other countries, by using district heating? I see district heating, particularly in our city centres and in our historic buildings, as having a critical role in meeting our target. This is probably one of the areas that I hope in the new climate action plan we have much more enhanced ambition. This will not just be from the waste heat from the incinerator, for example. We have just started a scheme in Tallaght which is taking the waste heat from an Amazon data centre - data centres are all about heat management and trying to minimise it - and using it to heat local buildings, and is an example of what we are going to start doing everywhere. New data centre applications will have a planning condition that we will look at where the heat and power management in those sort of industries will help us meet our targets and deliver district heating on a much more widescale basis. Nothing is finalised or written yet but this is one of the areas in the new climate action plan which will not be just about retrofitting, it will be about district heating as well.

On a couple of further points, on the carbon fund, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform published a review in advance of the national development plan, NDP, review last week. There was a paragraph or two which made surprising reading in a paper from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform because it acknowledged and committed to the effective hypothecation of the carbon tax revenues along the lines that have been agreed in the programme for government. This is not just going into retrofitting. This goes back to research and analysis done by such as John FitzGerald and Sue Scott in the ESRI many years ago, which said that in the application of any carbon tax, not only does one have to spend it on such as the warmer homes schemes and social housing to protect against and effectively eradicate fuel property, but one also should do social welfare measures which do the same and which protect against any fuel poverty impact of any carbon tax increase. That will be how the carbon tax will be applied.

Additionally, as agreed by the Government, a smaller percentage would go for measures in rural communities, particularly those in small farming communities, to support environmental measures and support paying farmers for providing nature services. That is part of a just transition approach to carbon tax application in order that the more rural and small farming type communities are also protected. That is the key application of that.

I will make one further point on the aggregation. This is not new. We have been thinking, talking and working on this going back over a considerable period. I remember myself working with a community in Ballinteer in my former time as Minister where we were doing exactly that. It is not an easy thing to do as everyone’s home is their castle and retrofitting it is not a small thing to do. When one goes into someone’s kitchen or living room, this is not a small decision or a thing that one does in passing, but there is real potential in the aggregated approach with real efficiencies in cost competitiveness and bringing the price down by doing it in this way.

The designation of the SEAI as the national agency for delivering the retrofitting programme is going to be key. I have every confidence in their chairperson and new chief executive and in their skills. They have the key task in that aggregated work.

At some point, which will happen relatively quickly and will be one of those switching points, the “keeping up with the Jones” effect will arise, where people will see the benefits, particularly the comfort benefits, of living in a well-insulated home, and we will see real pressure for everyone to get the same benefit. At that turning point we have to be ready with the apprenticeships, the workers, and with the construction industry in place.

That is where the benefit of upfront loading, such as the social housing stock and the warmer homes, will come from. It builds the industry so that when that turnover moment occurs, we are ready to go at scale.