Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair and our guests. I will be brief because I am aware it has been a long session. Unfortunately, I do not talk to constituents at 12.45 at night. They are usually in bed because they have to be up early the next morning for haulage, farming or whatever it is. Moving swiftly on from that, Deputies Canney and Boyd Barrett both spoke about infrastructure, as did the witnesses. They both mentioned water, which is a constraint in my area, particularly in south Kildare. New houses are being built but cannot get the water supply in. The people who are depending on those houses are still living in rented accommodation, at significant expense because the rent is exorbitant. That needs to be addressed. Somebody said we cannot leave it until 2040. I totally agree that we cannot do so. I would like to see some sort of input there.

Deputy Durkan spoke about retrofitting. In many areas, local authorities are wasting money on retrofitting. They are perhaps putting air-to-water heat pumps in their own stock but not replacing windows and doors, so they are effectively heating outside rather than inside. There is a significant problem with that. We need to be more careful with how money is spent on infrastructure and on houses that we will build in future. We need to make sure the money is correctly spent.

Will our guests elaborate on the continued use of once-off payments? I got the feeling that they are not in favour of these payments and that they are not increasing the standard of living. I will go through my questions consecutively if that is okay, because of time restraints.

The IFAC representatives made several comments about being left out of the Government’s forecasts, such as those relating to climate transition costs. Will they elaborate on that? Are there any thoughts on what we can do with the gains from the Apple tax, which is the elephant in the room?