Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
Decarbonisation of the Heat Sector: Discussion (Resumed)
Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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My questions are for whoever wants to answer them and are not specifically for Professor Mathiesan. There was a reference to just 1% of Ireland having district heating. We do not have a history of collaboration when it comes to pretty much anything in Ireland but especially in construction, other than where a developer builds a housing estate or block of apartments. What are the low-hanging fruit? What is the next step, in the views of the witnesses, for Ireland? I fully agree with some of the earlier comments, and Deputy Bruton's point about mapping this out for the country was very good. We need to look, not just in the coming years but over the next decade, at what we are going to do, and this is a really exciting proposal. Are there some low-hanging fruit to allow us to move from that 1% to 10%, for instance? Is it on the commercial side or in homes, for example?