Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy McManus for introducing this timely and thoughtful motion. Nobody can argue with the desirability of retrofitting; of course it should be done. The difficulty is that the insulation should have been undertaken when the houses were built. Record numbers of houses were constructed in this State with virtually no insulation. People can hear their next-door neighbour turning on the kettle, assuming the neighbour still has an electricity connection. The lack of regulation in regard to insulation was another scandal this Government allowed to happen.

The chairman of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, Mr. Brendan Halligan, told the Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security that it costs €20,000 to retrofit a standard house, including the condenser boiler, attic, walls, new windows, flooring and so on. Who in this age has €20,000 to retrofit their home? It is pie in the sky thinking unless the Government is willing to provide reasonable grant aid. Such a scheme would also create employment.

I do not normally stand up in this House and kick any particular party. One's politics are one's politics and we all must stand up for what we believe. However, the Green Party has no concept of poverty. Its Members have never been there and never will be there. If one questions party Members, one is subjected to a lecture about how we must save the world. A person sitting at home in the dark and cold with three small children is bound to conclude that the world can take care of itself because he or she is having difficulty enough taking care of his or her family. That is what people are facing into this winter.

Three years ago a friend of mine built a large new house. She was delighted with her new home but shocked to discover that her electricity bill was double what it had been in her previous house. Her larger home included a lot more lights. I wish to share a story I used to tell my children. The story is funny in itself but I used to tell it on the basis of my conviction that the times it depicted would never come around again. It involves a neighbour of my mother, a woman with six children, whose husband was in England working to support his family at a time when work was also scarce in England. Hearing a knock on the door one night she opened it to discover a man dripping wet in the rain that was dancing off the ground. Being a very kind person, she invited him inside. When he asked for a chair she hurried to the kitchen to fetch one, afraid he might faint. The man stood on the chair and cut off her electricity. When I asked her what she had done she responded that in those days there was nothing one could do. I told her that if it were me, he would have been hanging off two bare wires, as wet as he was.

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