Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I put it to the Minister and Minister of State that there is no debate about the importance of the retrofitting programme. It is a key step to Ireland reducing its emissions in the dramatic and radical way required. The technical possibility exists for us to have huge cuts in emissions caused by home heating. Like the possibility of free public transport, for example, there are other huge benefits to society and to ordinary people, not least the warmer and energy-efficient homes that can also reduce the prevalence of respiratory illnesses and the deaths associated with those. We can improve air quality dramatically, and we can improve good quality and decent-paying jobs and apprenticeships for decades to come. Most importantly, we can cut the need to use oil, gas and coal.

It can also help us to change the debate around climate change for once and for all, from one where ordinary people are consistently asked "What are you prepared to sacrifice? What are you as an individual prepared to do to change your behaviour and change your lifestyle?", to one where we offer a vision to people for a fossil fuel-free future that is better, healthier, and more equitable, and a more compassionate place to live than where we are now. Nobody could have a problem with the Government's big effort around a retrofit programme. We have known this for the last few years, as the crisis is accelerating, and we know that the need to cut fossil fuel use is more and more urgent.

The Green Party and the Minister entered office on the basis that only with the Green Party in government could we deliver the radical change that is needed to stop the worsening of the crisis. Yet, what do we see with this retrofitting programme and with practically every other practical policy? This is not a huge ambition or a huge step forward. In 2019, the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Bruton, announced, in a PR flurry, a retrofit plan for 500,000 retrofits of homes and the installation of 400,000 heat pumps. This current scheme is not a dramatic improvement in what has already been announced, and which is now being regurgitated three years later.

Moreover, my issue with structural problems around the scheme remain the same as those echoed by Deputies here. If a person is not included in the group that qualifies for the warmer homes scheme, not on fuel allowance or living in poverty and social welfare, not in the group that has the capacity to borrow €20,000 or €30,000, then that person remains in the same that he or she will always be in. Let us be clear, that this is the vast majority of ordinary working people in the State. Most of them will face the same issue of not being able to take steps they need to reduce their emissions, and to improve the efficiency of their homes.

Like other Deputies, I could cite example after example of people coming to my clinic who are just a few euro above the threshold relating to the fuel allowance. They do not fall into the pretty inadequate category the Government has set in the context of energy poverty and, hence, do not qualify for the allowance. That is not good enough. The matter needs to be reviewed and we need to take in a bigger cohort of people who cannot afford to borrow but who do not fall into the category of being poor enough to be supplied by the State.

Before I hand over to my colleague I want to deal with one other issue. I received a reply to a parliamentary question yesterday on issues to do with this retrofitting scheme. The much-lauded spending of €1 billion per year between now and 2028 turns out to be no such thing. Like the carbon budgets and the targets relating to reducing emissions on an annual basis, the figures are totally backloaded to a time when neither the Minister nor the Green Party were in government.

We do not know what is going to happen after 2025, but it is not until 2027, 2028, 2029 or 2030 that the billions will start being spent. It is very frugal up the point. We are backloading the responsibility of reducing emissions and reaching the targets required of us by the Paris Agreement, our own climate legislation and the programme for Government. Everything is being backloaded to a time when the Minister may not be sitting here at all. Who will be held accountable? Where is the responsibility?

The Act may do that but this is one Government passing to the next the legacy of the backloading of targets. Let us be honest with people. This is not €1 billion per year. Rather, it is an average of €1 billion per year over the next eight years. It is nothing like that between now and 2027.

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