Mr. Michael Manley:

On the question of finance, the first actions are Nos. 48 and 54 in the climate action plan which involve setting up taskforces to look at how we design models of financing. That is obviously going to involve a grant level support. It will involve a level of very low cost financing. We have AIB bringing low financing options to the market. How can we channel that right through the retail system and get it to the distribution system? Does that involve a level of State guarantee which would mitigate the issue of risk? Our own sense is that we will have to bring the cost of financing down to as near to zero as humanly possible. It also must be long-term financing so people can phase it in over time and see the advantage in it.

It is not going to be easy to do it but we have to do it. We have seen examples on the Continent and they have been referenced by the Tipperary Energy Agency in terms of what is on there.

In terms of the time of works, the allocation of work is around the Estimates cycle. At the end of the year we know what is coming in the following year and then we notify it to the SEAI and it maps out the programme for the following year. That is something which we need to take on board, in particular as we scale the programmes and get them to a much larger size. It was also mentioned by Tipperary Energy Agency. There is no particular restriction on the time of year he work is done but, practically, if people are going to recoup the grant, they will have to make their claim through the contractor and provide the receipts and invoices to the SEAI and the Department by year end. Typically, we clear off our accounts in the last week of November and the first week of December. That all acts back and narrows down the time. It is a fair point on that one.

The most difficult question is the long-term position on the pilot programme. It was made very clear that it was a pilot programme. The objective was to establish what the supply chain is like; how we can develop it; how we could mobilise people to do it and what works. As Mr. Gannon said, no two houses are the same so one must look at how one manages that. The pilot phase should come to a conclusion at the end of this year and then it has to be reviewed and a decision must be made on which bits work and which bits we must improve.