Mr. Mark Griffin:

On the schemes the SEAI supports, since the start of this year the decision was taken that we would not fund oil boilers as part of any upgrades. The transition to a low-carbon economy is not going to be cheap. Part of the issue we have to think about in the centre, and about which we are thinking already, is how one engages with communities to explain this. There will be a cost involved but there will be benefits in the long term in terms of health, the environment, social issues, the economy, jobs and all that kind of stuff. There is certainly a job of work to be done in the centre and at local and regional level to explain that. I think the national dialogue on climate action will have a role in that respect.

The Senator mentioned Food Wise 2025. Again, the committee will have my colleagues from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine before it shortly enough. We are, and have been, working very closely with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine around bioenergy, biomass, carbon sequestration, and energy crops. We are trying to align what sometimes appear to be policy tensions between the targets under Food Wise 2025 and the things we need to do to try to decarbonise a lot of sectors that are in the non-emissions trading scheme, ETS, sector. My Department is represented on the Food Wise 2025 high-level implementation group at assistant secretary level. We have an assistant secretary from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine represented on the group on climate action chaired by the Minister, Deputy Naughten. We are teasing out issues around the other things we need to do, looking at everything we have done across all the sectors and the commitments that exist and being aware of the pressures in particular sectors, to ensure that commitments we have entered into will be met absolutely by 2030.

I might ask Mr. Maughan to say something about carbon tax and the point the Senator made about how people investing in energy improvements will be taken into account in the design of a carbon tax system. When Mr. Maughan is done perhaps the SEAI could comment on the nearly zero energy building, NZEB, standard, what it entails, and the costs involved.