Mr. Declan Meally:

Yes. The key thing now is to get audits to action and moving them to the next stage. Again, it is key to work in combination with our partners in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and so on.

In relation to the non-domestic building stock, the Deputy is right that it is a challenge. There have been some very good developments in building regulations, which are looking at developing new building stock in the commercial sector. The Minister set up a heat task force at the start of this year. We have a commercial building working group that is looking at a roadmap for that group and developing that. I chaired a working group that looked at the public sector in that regard.

We have had some great successes over the last number of years where we worked with what I call the big five through a pathfinder programme. We worked with the HSE to look at the retrofitting of hospitals and hospital buildings. There were also schools. We worked with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to look at retrofitting universities and the education and training boards, ETBs, to show there are opportunities to do that. We are working with the Minister and the team in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, to develop roadmaps for the decarbonisation of the commercial and public sector buildings in order to be able to achieve the targets. Naturally, there are challenges in relation to skills and the supply chain, because we are retrofitting homes, the commercial sector and the public sector. Again, we are working with the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science as part of that and looking at the skills and the supply chain in order to be able to see these retrofits happen.

Through our programmes on the decarbonising of buildings, we are seeing great case studies on hotels and we are showing the way for others in the commercial sector in relation to what is possible. This includes changing out their fossil fuels for heat schemes. The Deputy will have seen that in the figures about providing grants. A large proportion of that is in decarbonising the heat in the commercial and public sector buildings. There has been €57 million on the commercial side, and this year there has also been €31 million in relation to the commercial side as well, in terms of offerings.