Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will let the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, talk about the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS. In my opening statement I gave some detail around the retrofitting programme which is really important, with our local authority stock and the housing stock that we have, in order to reduce emissions. Local authorities are key drivers in their own areas to advance climate policy. They are acutely aware of this. Their development plans have to underpin that. In regard to local authority buildings and the buildings that they control, we support them in the upgrade of those buildings. The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has a role in that too. We are looking at the energy efficiency within many of our older local authority buildings to see how we can expand renewables in that space through solar and other methods. Actually, in one of our oldest buildings, the Custom House, which is our own head office, much work has been done to improve energy efficiency, as well as in our office in Ballina, Mayo. We are conscious of how we can reduce energy consumption in the other buildings we have and thereby reduce emissions. However, the big piece of work that we are undertaking in that space is the energy retrofit programme. Our target is 36,500. We have done soft retrofits in about 75,000 homes where we improved standards within them. All new dwellings now have heat pumps and are A-rated. For new stock we are in good shape. We have a piece of work to do in regard to the older housing stock which we are working through. We will do about 2,400 retrofits this year. I will let Minister of State, Deputy Noonan in now on the biodiversity officers.