Mr. John McCarthy:

I fundamentally believe in democracy, Senator. People have genuine concerns and issues but the debates that are taking place reflect a sense that people want to get their heads around what these things mean. We will see how all of that pans out.

In terms of solar farms, we are talking to the Department of Community, Climate Action and Environment on the issue and specifically, as part of that Department's renewable energy roll out, whether the need for planning guidelines is something that we need to act on. We tend to roll out planning guidelines sparingly enough in the overall context. Certainly, when one considers other jurisdictions and the extent to which they issue planning guidelines from the centre, we tend to do them for very specific issues and types of development. As I said in my opening statement, we have to go through that process with that Department, and if the outcome of that process is that there is a need for consistency and guidance on how those types of developments are dealt with by individual planning authorities or An Bord Pleanála on appeal, then we will engage with that need as we have on other areas. We are trying to finalise the wind energy guidelines, as I referred to at the start.

In terms of the housing ambition, the Senator was correct to say that the figure is over 500,000 new homes. That is how many units the national planning framework considers will be required over the period to 2040 and the figure takes account of the population projections that are in place.

In terms of social housing, I outlined at the start the ambitious performance-based requirements that we have in place already through Part L of the building regulations. We will accelerate the requirement further once we finalise shortly the revisions to those regulations that are necessary in order to get us the final part of the journey towards nearly zero energy building, NZEB, performance.

Social housing developments will have to comply in the same way as any other housing development. Local authorities have a reasonable track record in coming forward with proposals, sometimes ahead of time, that are almost as good as demonstration projects. The performance requirements under the new regulations will be more cutting-edge in terms of energy and emissions.

I will ask my colleague to talk about charging points and their infrastructure. There are requirements in the NZEB directive which we will incorporate into regulations in due course. We will go to consultation on them next year, but any social housing development will have to comply with them, too.