Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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This is an important stage of the proceedings. It is important that the committee starts to take responsibility. We have been here since last July, we have engaged quite constructively over recent weeks and months and the engagement has been particularly intense in recent weeks. It is about taking responsibility now. The time for talk is over. We have all engaged with those in our constituencies and at local and national levels, particularly with children and students in recent weeks. They want us to take action and they expect us to take action on this. While it is easy for some of us to say we will do this, that and the other in the media and elsewhere, now is the time for action. It is important that we have a figure on what the trajectory will be. If we do not have that figure, there we will never be able to achieve anything.

It is also important that we need to be able to carry out these measures over the next number of years, be it retrofitting houses or whatever. We are playing catch up in this regard. There is a great cost to this and somebody has to pay for it. We have been down the road with different issues in the past where expenses were involved and members of other committees did not take responsibility. We will see the end result of that over the next period of time because of certain members who spoke quite loudly and were prepared to bully members into making decisions and frighten members in respect of different decisions but now is the time that we stand up and take responsibility for our actions. We have been here long enough and it is time we did that. The amendment to the amendment that Deputy Corcoran Kennedy has proposed is quite straightforward. It is saying that we need this trajectory and to have the figure underpinned by legislation this year, which is very important.