Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending today's meeting. For the record, the Opposition has facilitated the legislation on the basis of the urgent nature of the crisis we face regarding the lights going out next winter. I have to say it is a very unsatisfactory process with regard to engagement and information. I have listened to Government Deputies speak about how much information was available. Every time we have had an exchange on this there has been new information and some answers but other questions remain unanswered. I want to make this point to the Minister of State, as I did to the Minister, Deputy Ryan. At a meeting of the transport committee last week I told the Minister the presentation of these as savings is quite the Orwellian move. They are missed targets as they relate to retrofitting.

I have a number of questions. We are dealing with €200 million out of a possible €350 million. Do we know from where we might expect the €150 million to come later in the year? I welcome the fact there is €252 million remaining for the retrofit budget. Will the Minister of State give us some details of what targets will be missed that have given rise to the availability of this funding? The Minister of State has pointed towards the one-stop-shop and community energy targets. Will the Minister of State give us the figures on what the targets were, what will be started and what will be completed by the end of the year? This will give us a sense of the progress we are making on the one-stop-shop and the community energy scheme.

Within this funding will the Minister of State give us an update on the warmer homes scheme? I know the target is 4,800 by the end of the year. I know that at the end of May we had 1,453 done. The Minister of State points towards the objective of getting to 400 a month. Are we at 400 a month? Did we do more than 400 in June? To get us to the target of 4,800 by the end of the year we will need to do an average of 478 a month. Is this another target we will miss by the end of the year? These are the most vulnerable citizens. This brings me back to my original question. Will we have an underspend and money available at the end of the year because we will have missed targets in the warmer homes scheme? I want to register a concern about the approach in government at budget time and announcing very high figures for retrofitting and then spending the rest of the year moving money out of this allocation, whether for the electricity credit or something else.

With regard to the reallocation from the electricity credit underspend my colleague, Senator Boylan, held a session last week on energy poverty. On Second Stage Deputy Smith and I raised concerns about the fact the electricity credit would not be made available to people in halting sites for example. We know there are other multi-unit residences that did not receive the electricity credit. We have €20 million being reallocated from it now. Will the Minister of State tell us how many people in halting sites or multi-unit developments did not receive the electricity credit?