Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will make one point on that, if I can. I agree fully with Deputy O'Rourke. The reason heat pumps are so attractive is, first, one gets a really gentle, warm heat. It gives us flexibility. We will go into a world where heat pumps will turn on and off based on what the electricity price is and allow us some of that balancing capability around renewable power.

Going back to what I mentioned about the European legislation defining much of what we are doing, one of the really challenging pieces of European legislation was the energy efficiency directive - the final energy use. There, we face a real challenge because it is a flat figure and our population is growing. Going back to what I said in my earliest contribution, our economy is growing rapidly and how one gets overall energy use down is really challenging. One of the benefits, in industrial heat as well as in domestic heat, one gets from heat pumps is the efficiency gain. This incredible simple technology, where one is drawing outside air through the back of the radiator, effectively, of the fridge, with the temperature variation leading to that gas changing which allows one to draw down the energy heat from a heat exchange to heat one's radiators and heat one's water tank, is a 300% or 400% improvement in efficiency. If we can do that at scale, that gives us a reduction in the total energy use while providing the same services for the households. There are so many benefits from it but the massive efficiency gain that will help us meet our energy efficiency targets is one of the reasons heat pumps are so important.