Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I thank everyone for their presentations. My first question is for the SEAI. Its opening statement stated:

We are catalysts for action through our grant and incentive programmes and capacity-building processes. Citizens, communities, businesses and other stakeholders are at the heart of everything we deliver.

Many of these schemes were conceived when we were in a different position. We are now in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis in respect of fuel, rent and shortly food too. There is a war going on on our Continent. A previous meeting of the committee heard there was some confusion among the public around the grants and incentives that exist and around applying for them. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul recommended that local community energy advisers be deployed in communities for two reasons. First they would act as a point of information and second they could target certain people. We all know our communities well and we know the people who are involved in things like the Tidy Towns. They are often retired people who have time but there is another cohort who are working every hour God sends and are collecting their children from crèches and so on and they do not really have time to find this information. What efforts are the local SEAI groups making to target those working people who are in good jobs and who may be new to experiencing fuel poverty, as well as those who are well used to it? How are we actually targeting those people? They often do not have the time to find out what is available.

My next question is for the Department. Earlier sessions have heard about the national retrofit scheme. Is there a named person in each local authority with the responsibility for sign-off to ensure that public money and grants are going to the right people and being spent? Is there a person or a group of people that they report to at national level? Is there a scrutiny process? Is that information published?