Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, on bringing forward the motion. It is very clear that the retrofit scheme the Government has in place is not working and not delivering for very many people the length and breadth of the country, particularly those on middle incomes, who may be paying down a mortgage and who have all the other various issues in life to try to deal with. They simply cannot afford to take out another loan, which is what the Government insists they have to do to be able to retrofit their house properly. It becomes unaffordable to them. As my colleagues have outlined, a scheme needs to be put in place whereby we would have a tiered system, those on the lowest incomes could get a larger grant and that would tier off as people would get onto higher incomes. I have come across numerous people in my constituency, as I am sure the Minister has in his constituency, who want to do this work and are committed to doing it but find they simply cannot afford it because the scheme in place does not fit their income thresholds and where they are in their lives. If the Government is committed, as we understand it is or as it continues to tell us that it is, to dealing with the carbon emergency and the climate emergency we face, not just in Ireland but globally, we have to be able to assist people to do the right thing.

The motion before us does that. It ensures that the money is put in the right place, ensuring in turn that the people who have the coldest homes, the homes that need the most energy-efficient retrofitting, have the means to pay for that retrofitting. That is why we appeal to the Minister to change tack. The way this has been done up to now is simply is not working. The fact that we are heading for a three-year waiting list, with more than 9,000 people waiting, tells us there is a problem here. It needs to be adjusted and the Minister needs to ensure that adjustment is delivered.

Finally, solar panels and solar PV panels are one of the projects that I know very many people around the country consider doing and would love to be able to do but, again, they find that affordability is the big problem. In many other jurisdictions governments put solar panels in place on people's houses for free. Then, after a number of years, the householder takes ownership of them. There is no imagination at all on this Government's part to deliver that idea of microgeneration such that people may produce their own power for their houses. That needs to change.

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