Ms Marie Donnelly:

To start with the issue of public participation, I cannot agree more with Senator Boylan about the importance of that and it is something which the council has discussed. At the end of the day, when we are talking about the targets, trajectories and policies involved, they will come to nothing if we do not successfully engage the hearts and minds of everybody in the country because this will impact on all of us. It will mean a change in our behaviour and our working and living patterns going forward. In that context, the extent of public participation is fundamental.

There are two issues that I would like to address. I already spoke about retrofitting and how essential it is to target, as a priority, the worst-performing houses, particularly those that have either fuel poverty or are socially owned. They are priority target areas for retrofitting; that is absolutely clear. The second area I wish to refer to in terms of public participation is the extent to which people can feel the benefits of this will be spread equally and that we know that in advance. In a way, that goes to the extent to which we have citizen dialogue around this, with citizens who are in a position to participate when they want to have their views knows and their voices heard, to see the consequences of what they say being taken into account. That is part and parcel of the process we need to have going forward. Some people will go with it while not really having a view. When people have a view, they must have an opportunity to express it. That is where the national dialogue is hugely important in outreaching to people, listening to what they say and ultimately responding to them. I listened to Mark Foley on his consultation results on the microgeneration. EirGrid went out with microgeneration not even on the page. At the end of the consultation, as a consequence of listening, it came back and said that it was looking at 500 MW of microgeneration. That is what real consultation is about, that is, where you go out with something that is not even there and you come back with a whole new section because you listened to what people said.

That is the delivery of the just transition. It is when you listen to everybody and allow them to have their voices heard and see their voices are having an impact.

On climate justice, we had a full section on the just transition. It is not to carve it up and put things into boxes but on the one hand there is the just transition, which is to ensure nobody is left behind. The social justice then goes beyond Ireland into our role in the world and how we see our participation in the global effort in this space. We are a small country. Our emissions of themselves are not causing climate change. However, just because we are a small country does not give us the opportunity to opt out. Our emissions per capita, are 12 tonnes per year; the EU average is 8 tonnes. Even in comparison to other EU states, we emit more per capita. Moreover, for some poor and developing countries, we are seen as a rich, developed nation and therefore need to take our share of the effort and burden of reducing emissions. Out of that, perhaps we will develop new techniques of doing it and sharing them with others. We were looking at social justice in the country, leaving nobody behind, and in a global sense with regard to where Ireland fits on the global stage.

It is a point of discussion about data centres. As for my understanding of the consultation that took place, one of the questions was whether we should generate renewable energy where it is best and most cost-effective to do it, which makes sense. It was then whether we should have the high-use demand side located close to where the power is generated or do we allow it to separate. An important issue that came out of the consultation is an awareness that maybe we do not have to bring every electron from Donegal to Dublin for a data centre. Maybe we can think about proximate location of data centres beside power sources to reduce grid construction, for example, and interventions in that space. It is part and parcel of the fabric of what we are doing. When we look at data centres, it is not just power, which is important, but also the fibre-optic cables they use. It is a question of planning the infrastructure to combine the benefits of the natural resources we have with the opportunities we can get from data centres, as well as from manufacturing facilities, some of which might need large quantities of power.

Energy efficiency is clearly the way forward. The concept that the council is thinking about and pushing a little bit is our need to tie energy efficiency to emissions reduction. It is a double metric to apply to the initiatives and policies we put in place. It would be unfortunate, for example, to retrofit a house, taking it from a D to a B1 or B2, and then find it is still using a fossil fuels heating system. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but it can happen if policy is not constructed in the right way.