Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his opening statement and update. We are here to discuss the transfer of €128.6 million from subhead B4 - residential and community retrofit - to subhead B11. We discussed this move previously but were not clear about where and to what level the funding would be moved and where it would come from. The Minister acknowledged that transfer but said the Department will maintain delivery outputs. How can the Minister make that claim? It seems contradictory to take €128.6 million while still expecting to maintain delivery outputs. It begs the question as to whether the Department's delivery outputs were too low in the first place or whether it over-allocated in the budget. How can the Minister make the claim that delivery outputs will be maintained?

My second question concerns the degree to which this transfer has been energy poverty-proofed. For example, €62 million was approved for the better energy communities scheme in the revised Supplementary Estimate. That figure has now been reduced to €43 million so €19 million has been taken from that budget. That scheme has a specific role in energy poverty reduction, as acknowledged by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and in the Government's environmental assessment in 2020. We are supporting this legislation and the transfer of this funding but at a departmental level, how was the decision made to identify the funding? I would have thought areas of the Department's expenditure that were not specifically allocated to energy poverty reduction could have been more ideally targeted. The Minister's figures for deep retrofits last year show 1,800 of those deep retrofits were achieved by the addition of solar PV, which is great. This indicates that the houses that are benefiting from that were already cosy and well-insulated compared with others that might have a D, E or F building energy rating and need more significant work. Within the range of options and funds available to the Minister, was there not more appropriate funding that would not impact on energy poverty reduction initiatives?