Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I certainly agree with the point regarding young people. In the case of green flags in public buildings, many of the first ones we saw were in schools and other buildings in local communities. Great initiatives have been shown by young people and schools have been leaders in that regard.

On solar panels, the Minister has not given a specific date regarding the regulations. Schools cannot enter the planning system and that is a big problem.

To return to the retrofitting issue, the pathfinder programme is beneficial, but the point of it was to establish scalability. As that has surely been established over the past four or five years, it is time to scale up the programme.

I have a few practical questions on the summer works programme, which the Minister mentioned. Will the programme be entirely separate from the existing summer works programme or will there be a number of new grounds on which schools can apply? In any event, will there be additional funding for that? To clarify, will it be an entirely new programme, with a new form and so on, or will there be new grounds, additional to the nine or ten that currently exist, on which to apply within the existing programme?

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