Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister very much. I have great concerns. I have said repeatedly that I very much want the Minister to succeed in government because we need him to do so. I have worked in this sector for 20 to 30 years and I am becoming increasingly downhearted by the fact that I do not believe this Government will meet the targets or achieve what needs to happen. My biggest fear at this moment is that the Minister does not recognise that, that he thinks everything is still on track and, as he said earlier on, that he is slowly turning the ship around. Our emissions went up last year. We have the second highest emissions per capitain Europe and this Government has not met a single one of its targets yet.

The Government talks about retrofitting 27,000 homes. How many of those homes will be retrofitted to B2 standard? The Minister's target is for 500,000 houses at B2 standard in six to seven years’ time. I do not have faith that is going to happen. I wish that was not the case.

I have the annexe to the Climate Action Plan 2021. There are 493 actions on 250 pages, yet 166 delayed measures were still not done by November of this year, and the Minister’s Department has failed to action 41% of its own actions on time.

The Government is very good at producing documents, proposals, plans and coming out with very big headline statements, but delivering is where the Government is falling down. Where is the Government actually delivering and what changes is the Government going to make in the new climate action plan that reflect the reality that emissions have gone up and there have been delays in meeting targets?

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