Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Those points have been well made in respect of the Traveller community. Concerning the increase in the carbon tax, I stated, and it is the case, that €202 million is to be allocated for retrofitting directly from the carbon tax in 2022. In respect of supplementary funding, €252.8 million is still available for retrofitting in 2022. Certainly, then, funding is not the issue.

Regarding the Deputy’s last question, as I said there are supply chain and capacity issues in respect of delivery. These issues are being addressed by the Government. Hopefully, these supply chain issues will be resolved as we move into 2023. The capacity to deliver in this regard centres on skills, apprenticeships and labour supply. These are issues that the Minister has worked on with the Departments of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Enterprise, Trade and Employment to ensure we have sufficient people trained in the requisite fields to carry out these important works. Undoubtedly, the ambition is significant, but it will take time to ramp up to the scale we require to get these extremely important retrofitting projects carried out urgently in the next several years.