Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am quite interested in the co-location of large ambitious renewable energy projects with thermal plant. We saw earlier in the year with the announcement of the Moneypoint project that this is really piggybacking on the two 400 kV lines that traverse the country west to east. Does Mr. Lynott see other potential for those kinds of hybrid connections or co-locating renewables with thermal plant?

Last August, we had the results of the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, auction. Mr. Lynott may have some feedback to give us on that. We certainly would be very interested to hear it because there will be a number of these kind of auctions in the coming years and they will need to evolve and be appropriate for the technology, the electricity profile and the generation profile we are trying to develop.

I am quite interested in retrofitting. As Mr. Lynott mentioned, about 750,000 homes will switch from fossil fuel boilers to heat pumps. Is there more that can be done on the supplier and retail side to incentivise that switchover? There is a very legitimate concern across Government that the skills pipeline for the revolution about which we are talking may not be there. I know the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, is doing a lot of good work in the area but what we are trying to do is truly phenomenal and will require a significant uptake in skills in engineering and across the whole spectrum of education, not just technical education. What are Mr. Lynott's views on that? Does he think we are doing enough? Can we do more? If he has any wisdom to offer us, we would appreciate it.

Mr. Douglas made a very important point earlier about political leadership. I would like to hear more about that because political leadership has been lacking in the past. We will not get to where we want to go unless we have very clear direction and very strong political leadership. Mr. Douglas is speaking to a bunch of politicians now. I must give credit to the committee. It is a very engaged committee that is very serious about the work it is doing. Perhaps that political leadership does not exist across the Government system. Could Mr. Lynott comment on that and what he would like to see there?