Ms Marie Donnelly:

The Deputy's first question is subjective as to what has worked and not worked. It is fair to say we have marked success in the area of retrofit in Ireland. It possibly worked because we have had the carbon tax in place. That has been ring-fenced and used to finance and support people in the deep retrofit of their homes. One area that has been less successful, which I have already mentioned, is forestry. Notwithstanding the fact that we have a Government policy in place and financial backup to that policy, we have not yet succeeded in achieving the targets for forestry plantation in the country. That is an area where we and, I am sure, the Government are looking for good ideas to do something. In the macroeconomic analysis we have looked at the investment level necessary. Investment by Government would be required but clearly all investment cannot come from the Government. It will be private funding as well as Government funding. Part of that private funding will come because of Government policy. We were talking about renewables, particularly offshore renewables, and it is the framing of Government policy that attracts private investment into these large ventures that delivers results for us. It will be Government through direct funding and other kinds of grants and activities, but private funding is also a hugely important area.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil is a scarce resource. There is some challenge as to whether the amount being used currently across Europe is sustainable. Investigations are ongoing in that respect. It may turn out that it is not sustainable. You can take a vat of vegetable oil, contaminate it, and it is suddenly HVO. Reliance on HVO is targeted at the hard to decarbonise areas, which would put transport higher up the list than heating, especially low temperature heating, at temperatures somewhere between 25°C and 30°C. We just do not have enough HVO, either in the country or available globally, to do a panacea solution across all our needs. We need to prioritise for it. I will pass to my colleague for some detail on the macroeconomic analysis we did.