Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Sorry, that is in relation to energy efficiency. It is a more efficient use of energy. I do not know why there was a drop and I will have to come back to the Deputy on it. I do not have an answer. However, we expect the outturn for 2017 to be up. I will come back to the Deputy because I honestly do not have an answer to that.

Deputy Dooley asked me about electric vehicles and charging points. He is right that this issue is coming up all over the place. There are approximately 900 charging points nationally, most of which are the relatively slow ones. On top of that, every person who purchased a new electric vehicle had a charging point installed at their home. The vast majority of people are actually charging at home. Some people are charging during the day, but the numbers are limited. If we want to get people to move from using their cars purely for commuting and to travel across the country, it will be necessary to have an effective network of charging points. That is why we announced this year additional funding of €1.8 million, of which €1.5 million is for capital expenditure and €300,000 is for current expenditure, to expand the network of charging points nationally. Currently, we have approximately 4,500 electric vehicles in the country. The grant has been paid out for 2,636 electric vehicles since it was initially introduced and there will have been imports on top of that.

The number of charging points per electric vehicle is probably better than most other places in Europe. However, that does not take from the point the Deputy makes. We saw a significant improvement last year. Approximately one third of all new electric vehicles on our roads were purchased in 2017 and we expect to see that increase again this year. In tandem with that, we need to repair the points which are not operational. Some local authorities, including Deputy Dooley's in Clare, have improved the signage and road markings for electric vehicle charging points. My own local authority, Roscommon County Council, has done the same.

We must encourage local authorities to do that across the country. We are now rolling out the fast-charging points. We are conscious of it.

Interestingly, we held a new electric vehicle-hybrid trial in Letterkenny last month. Where taxis were used to transport patients for dialysis to Letterkenny hospital, they were conducting trials on the use of battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and hybrid vehicles. The plug-in hybrids and the hybrid vehicles were supplied by Toyota - they were Toyota Priuses - and Nissan provided the electric vehicles, which were Nissan Leafs. We also had the cold weather and we will be able to look at the impact of the cold weather on that. Taxi drivers will give us a good idea, particularly in rural areas, such as Letterkenny, where they are servicing a rural area, of some of the challenges and issues. As the committee will be aware, my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport last month launched the new grant scheme for taxi drivers of electric vehicles and hybrids.

The Chair asked about the national development plan and the ramping up, from 30,000 premises to 45,000 premises per annum. The main aspect where we will see the ramping up will be on some of the lower volume schemes. On the better energy homes scheme, last year we did 14,606 homes. On the better energy warmer homes, we did 6,555 homes. However, the newer schemes include the warmth and well-being scheme, where we will conduct a pilot on 1,000 homes over a three-year period. This will involve a deep retrofit and looking at the health outcomes for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and children with asthma. We have asked the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to examine the health outturns in that regard. We have spent €15,500 doing a deep retrofit on each of those homes. In fact, we had envisaged a budget of €20,000 on average per home. In practical terms, the cost was €4,500 less than that.

We are also looking at a further deep retro-pilot, some of which will involve turf cutters - those who were availing of turf compensation scheme. In fact, the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne and I are participating in an information evening quite soon on that, talking to some of those families to see whether we can transition away from solid fuel to more sustainable forms of heating. The other deep retrofit pilot will look at moving away from oil-fired heating. The cost of doing this is not as prohibitive as we initially thought but we are building capacity within the sector, giving contractors the opportunities to bid for these scheme, building up the skill sets and building up the training ability for contractors to do it.

We have now also ramped up the sustainable energy community scheme this year. We have the better energy communities across the country. Last year, there were 44 projects approved and we have put additional funding into that this year. The call is just opening on the sustainable energy community scheme for €3 million. The objective is to look at communities that have not availed of energy efficiency grants up to now and, working closely with them, put a facilitator in place so that they can put a detailed plan in place to improve the energy efficiency of the community as a whole. Effectively, we will guarantee any group that works with us and the SEAI on this and that meets the terms and conditions, funding this year to get on that process because on so many occasions in the past we have communities go to a huge amount of effort and submit applications to find that they were not successful. We are saying we will guarantee them funding this year to get their project off the ground and then give them the capacity to bid for the better energy community scheme next year. We would expect, because of these pilot initiatives that are now ramping up, that we will be able to meet that target of 45,000 premises or homes a year by 2021.