Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The more that I talk to people about it, the more enthusiastic they are about it. There is a general acceptance that this is the right thing to do and efficiency is a good thing, particularly in the area of food waste, as the Deputy mentioned. Supermarkets are interested in that. There is much innovation going on in this space. I was at Dogpatch the other day and there were many start-ups focused on sustainability and the circular economy.

The Deputy mentioned just transition. There are some savings from just transition projects mostly because they have not drawn down at the rate we expected them to. One of the Deputy’s questions was on new legislation, so I will give him an update on where we are with it. The Government committed, through the climate action plan, to establish a just transition commission. The Minister has now established the just transition task force, which comprises representatives of key social dialogue pillars. The task force will provide independent advice to the Government regarding the establishment of an enduring structure for the just transition commission.

The task force's recommendations will focus on the functions and mandate of the commission and resourcing requirements to support the just transition commission in its work.

I understand the savings on waste management relate to landfill remediation projects. The Deputy will be familiar with the landfill remediation programme. We have historical landfill sites around the country that were illegal or historical dumps, some of which have polluted the land and it needs to be restored. The best known is the Kerdiffstown site in Kildare, which was an illegal dump and is now being turned into a park. The remediation of those sites has cost tens of millions of euro in a multi-annual programme. It is positive. The savings under the landfill remediation programme are due to revised timelines in the implementation of some of those projects. Funding has been allocated to progress works on 125 different landfill sites across the State under the programme and it is anticipated that 60% of the funding will have been drawn down by the end of the year. A significant proportion of funding, €7.5 million, was allocated to the Kerdiffstown project, which is finally coming to an end. The site has been fully remediated and the remediation management infrastructure has been installed.

The scheme for low-cost loans for retrofitting has taken much longer to implement than we expected. It is a European Investment Bank, EIB, scheme and the EIB had not previously done domestic or consumer-orientated financing. Everything it had done in the past related to commercial and non-domestic financing. We are now at a point where we have asked the lending institutions to take part in the scheme. I expect them to be ready in the first quarter of next year. Homeowners will be able to borrow between €5,000 and €75,000 on a ten-year loan and those loans will be unsecured. It is an innovation in the market. A ten-year unsecured loan cannot be easily obtained. It is a loan of between €5,000 and €75,000 at an interest rate which is several points below the market rate. The EIB and the Government are helping to de-risk the loans for the institutions so they can offer them. At the same time, the Government will subsidise the interest rate so that it will be several points below what people would pay in the market. It will be an attractive rate.