Mr. Paul Kenny:

A total of 37% of new builds had heat pumps, while 63% had fossil fuel boilers, which, as we know, are incompatible with meeting our climate change targets. That is an important point to make.

The two questions about financing are very important. We have engaged directly with the banks which have told us that they would be delighted to lend money, as that is their business. However, it cannot be done without scale. We have tried desperately hard to scale up and 33,000 homes is a large turnover in two years. What we need to do is have a strong stable commitment at a policy level. About 500 people have already applied to us and we are trying to deal with them. Obviously, there is a capacity issue in the marketplace. However, a carbon tax is very important to drive people into it because only some will understand the grants scheme and so on.

The other key aspect, looking at green bonds and what other countries have done across Europe, is that the models at we have looked more or less combine public good banks such as KfW in Germany with local parties such as local energy agencies and others like them. We need the two to work together. I strongly encourage the committee to consider a slight rebalancing from capital grants towards capital grants and current expenditure support.

I encourage the committee to consider a slight rebalancing of supports from capital grants to capital grants and current expenditure. We need advisers. Upper Austria has gone from 2% to 50% renewable heat and in a region the size of Munster they have 45 publicly-funded advisers to give advice to homeowners and so on. That is what we do and, thankfully, with the likes of the European Investment Bank, EIB, the Electricity Supply Board, ESB and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI we have been able to fund some of it. We need a lot more of it because people do not know.

What is the big win in terms of microgen? Solar is very important at one level; of the super-homes, I think about 80% would have solar PV. It is very much part of the solution and will generate roughly 2,000 units of energy for what we usually put on homes. However, it is just a part. The other main microgeneration technology is heat pumps. A heat pump is coupled with a solar panel on the roof. The sun hits the solar panel and powers the heat pump. That provides a huge amount of energy from the sun, essentially. This goes back to Deputy Eamon Ryan's comment that solar should not be overlooked. It is really important that the two go together, with the solar heat from the pump and the solar panel coupled together as part of a retrofit.