Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are a couple of questions I want to put to Ms Ní Shearcaigh. She pointed out in her opening statement that the retrofitting of homes has had an impact in terms of improving the living conditions of older people and that it has improved their health and well-being. As we know, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications commissioned the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to do an assessment of the deep retrofitting of homes in Ireland and found that people have improved health outcomes and are attending their GP less. They are being prescribed fewer antibiotics, they are being admitted to hospital less and when admitted to hospital they are discharged far quicker. In the work Ms Ní Shearcaigh has done on the islands, has she seen anecdotal evidence of that impact, particularly in relation to older people and chronic conditions? Managing chronic conditions is difficult across this country but it is far more difficult for island communities in terms of getting specialist appointments etc. I ask Ms Ní Shearcaigh to comment on that.

Second, she might give us an idea of the impact of engaging with Horizon researchers. She has been engaging with the research community on the projects she is involved with on the islands. What sort of an impact has there been from being able to engage directly with them? On that issue, Ms Ní Shearcaigh has spoken about the challenges around the community wind project, the limited ability to export electricity onto the mainland grid and the issues and complexities with regard to battery storage. Have any of the research projects looked at using smart storage heaters in homes? This is a technology that has been developed here in Ireland by a number of companies and they are rolling it out in other parts of Europe. Has any engagement been done in relation to that? Having an isolated grid on an island community seems to me to be an ideal test bed for it.

Finally, I will raise something that is an issue for us as members of the committee. It is very clear that there are challenges with getting projects off the ground in terms of the flexibility and adaptability being provided through the regulatory environment. There is an opportunity for us as a committee to engage with the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities to see if it would take a more flexible approach in order to facilitate pilots in relation to the island communities, which could then be upscaled and replicated across the country as a whole.