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

I very much appreciate the Deputy's kind words. This will sound like a mutual appreciation society but much of what we have been able to do in the past four years was because there was a platform laid in what the Deputy had done with the likes of the waste-action plan and circular economy. The Climate Action Plan 2019 set the format that inspired the new legislation and I could go on.

At a time there is a lot of public lack of confidence in the ability of the State to deliver in a timely and cost-effective manner, my Department has shown real capability and I would very much credit the officials on that. To take some of the schemes we are examining today, the national broadband plan is working. It is accelerating and is ahead. Despite what some of the original critics argued against it, it has proven itself within our system.

Similarly, the deposit refund scheme is an incredible success. I spoke to officials about it yesterday and they said that part of that was because there was political certainty behind it. What has been done in terms of setting up an industry and NGO stakeholders approach also contributed to this. They knew the political system was convinced and certain on this. That certainty meant that we delivered more than our nearest neighbour, the UK, which was ahead of us on this and is now behind us. It is looking to see how we did it. The scheme has been an incredible success. It has been on time, on cost and ahead of expectations.

I would say the same on retrofitting and energy efficiency. I disagree somewhat with the Deputy that we have not put a focus on that. This has been particularly successful in the domestic sphere, with the likes of the warmer homes scheme, the SEAI, the new loan scheme the Deputy mentioned and the one-stop shops and so on. That really is working. He is correct about the commercial sector. For whatever combination of reasons, those grant supports for energy efficiency did not take up as well in the sector. It did not seem to have that scaling-up and rapid deployment and so on and I take the his basic point on that.

Efficiency is going to be absolutely key to meeting our climate targets. However, it was very interesting attending the European energy and environment Council on Monday and Tuesday this week. The debate was on the Draghi report, which centred on the electrification of everything and how Europe can improve its capability, planning and legal systems as well as elsewhere. What tends to be forgotten, we agreed at the Council, is the energy-efficiency side. We need to continue to double down on that. Putting particular focus on the enterprise sector might be good because that is where it has not kicked off sufficiently, as the Deputy said.