Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I welcome our guests. Clare County Council, for one, had access to funding to retrofit the social housing stock, so I am not sure if I agree with the point about needing to give money to local authorities. It is a question of getting the local authorities to spend the money and do the work.

In Clare, we set up a community energy agency, or social enterprise, that gives free workshops throughout the county to help individuals. There is a gap here. The SEAI has community energy officers but does not take people by the hand to figure out what is best for their individual home. Rather, it tries to get the entire community to do it, which means it is then down to volunteers and is complicated. There is a missing piece in regard to helping individuals. We have had packed audiences any time we have held the workshops anywhere the county and turned away lots of people. As a result, more than 300 individuals have got solar panels. We got low-percent loans from the credit union that can be paid back, and the savings on even the smallest system can cover the payback of the loans.

There was no retrofit programme or anything else before the current Government, so while it might not be happening as quickly as we would like, more than 38,000 houses have benefited one way or another from the retrofit programme. That said, we need to do a lot more. There is much more investment in apprenticeships to help more people access the programme and the fuel allowance has increased. While there is a delay for the middle group, at least it is happening, because it was not happening previously.