Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Empowering Local Government and Local Communities to Climate Action: Discussion

Photo of Cormac DevlinCormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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-----state aid rules. How do we fare against our European counterparts on this? What we are talking about here is not innovative, per se. Many EU jurisdictions are way ahead of us and we are trying to play catch-up on that. I do not want to waste time - and we do not have it to waste - to try to catch up to where some of our counterparts are at.

Turning to the Department, Mr. Deegan referenced the national retrofit plan in his opening remarks, thankfully. I heard what the Chairman said but I am going to ignore that and ask three points on it. One is the one-stop shop. We have spoken about that before but by my reckoning things have not improved on that. There is a great willingness to participate from the public. Mr. Deegan might provide an update. People who were previously approved for schemes were mentioned earlier, I think by Deputy Bríd Smith. That could have been the new 80% scheme announced earlier this year or indeed a previous scheme many years ago. Where do those people stand in regard to applying for the new 80% scheme? Let us say they made an application last year. The terms have improved, so can they avail of that improved scheme? The final point concerns the people who have actually had the assessments done. I think Deputy Bruton spoke about them earlier. We might refer to this cohort as the low-hanging fruit. These are simple, semi-detached houses, or maybe end-of-terrace ones. They are the ones that are easy and straightforward. However, what of more complex properties? What method is there for those property owners to engage to try to alleviate the concerns raised in the report?