Mr. Robert Deegan:

To clarify one point, increasingly, on the warmer homes scheme, which is the energy poverty scheme, they are increasingly deeper retrofits? The average value of a retrofit in the first six months of this year under that scheme was about €17,000.

It is far more extensive than was the case a couple of years ago when it was focused on lagging jackets and attic insulation.

On the point regarding budgets, the warmer homes scheme budget runs all year around, as does the budget for the better energy homes scheme, which is available at any point during the year. The Chairman may be alluding to two of the schemes in particular, namely, the community energy grants scheme and the one-stop-shop development scheme. They issued calls for projects and those projects were to be completed by the middle of October. As Covid intervened in that regard, we have encouraged participants to have as much activity as possible to be completed by the deadline of 15 October but we have also pushed out some of the deadlines for some of the projects to allow them a little more time to work. However, the budget runs all year around.