Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for the acknowledgment of some of the good recommendations in the report. The Deputy is asking the same question Deputy Eamon Ryan asked earlier, that is, whether we are we leaving too much for the 2030 to 2050 period. I will give the Deputy the same answer. We do not have the same certainty around the costs and the choices in technologies needed to make to make those decisions now. We could make bad calls by picking wrong technologies and sinking many resources into technologies that do not evolve. We have taken the best advice on the evolving technologies and have picked the ones that show we can deliver by 2030 with the least burdens being imposed on people.

The next phase will need more work. I have told Professor FitzGerald, and I am sure he has said this to the Deputy, that we need more research to be done on that next phase. We will start to do that work ourselves but much work is probably needed to identify the sort of technologies that should be adopted over that 20-year period from 2030 to achieve the net zero.

On the issue of just transition, I was gratified that when the difficulties arose for Bord na Móna, under the regional enterprise strategy I was party to putting in place, which was to have regional enterprise strategies in every sector, the midlands regional strategy immediately moved to adopt decarbonisation as a central plank of its strategy. It is using the regional enterprise fund and the network it has developed to deliver that. I found it heartening to know that something decided upon in tougher times when we were simply talking about trying to get jobs off the ground is in place to deal with adaptation which is occurring.

I also make the general point that in the space of ten years, we have come from an economy that lost 120,000 jobs in construction and created well-nigh 500,000 jobs in other sectors. That was a phenomenal transition. I have read the stories of people who lost their job, took on Springboard, took on a traineeship, reinvented themselves and are back in that economy. We need to make that easier for people to do. I share the Deputy’s belief that the education and training boards, ETBs, are very well placed to do that. We will be relying on them to respond to the change so that as retrofitting starts to take off, they are responding with the skill base.

I would argue with my former employer, the ESRI, saying that every nine houses we retrofit results in one less house being built. Many colleagues I talk to say that there is not much house construction going on in many counties and constituencies. There is capacity for people to do retrofitting in some areas not experiencing that sort of acute demand for housing and house building, and it does not have the displacement effect the Deputy spoke about. However, I acknowledge that there is a capacity and we need to plan for it. We are committed to doing that.

The Deputy should not say that everybody will have to face a bill of €50,000 to €60,000. If someone has a cavity wall, they can do that for €2,000. If one does not have one's attic insulated, one can do that for €1,000. One can put in heating controls. Many things can be done that are not those huge asks, so to speak. I agree we have to start to do deeper retrofits but we want to get one third of the houses retrofitted by 2030. We want to get on a roadway where people are doing more of that. For many homes that will be possible, and we will support them to do shallower things on a journey over time to deliver that. We should not put people off by saying they might suddenly have to face a huge bill. We can evolve that and develop the system.

On biogas, it goes back to the point made at the outset. The reason we are reticent and saying we need to assess this is because, on the cost basis, it does not look as if it is in the area of the curve where we need to move immediately. It is further up that curve and until we test and assess its capacity, we need to do more work to see the role biogas will play. Many people say that burning biogas in a power station is not a good policy. We are supporting it in combined heat and power situations where one is getting a much better bang for one's biogas buck.