Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I rarely take issue with my colleague, Deputy Matthews, but I emphasise that the Government parties are as one on the climate action plan. I appreciate there are many Green Party fingerprints on the plan but we in this three-party Government are passionate about it and have enthusiastically supported it. I commend Deputy Matthews on acknowledging that there is a will and desire in rural Ireland to meet our climate action targets. There is a groundswell of enthusiasm among farmers for the challenge that lies ahead. That is reflected in the interest in the new agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, which is significantly oversubscribed. While it is an issue for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, I believe we should bring all farmers into that scheme.

If we want to see the progress to which we aspire in regard to climate action, we need to make it more accessible and make it work for people. Everybody in this Chamber will have had people come to their constituency offices who have become perplexed trying to access the SEAI grants or find out how the grants fit their circumstances and what they need to do. Many people have been told in one-stop shops that unless they spend €40,000 or €50,000, they will not get a grant. People want to do this in a number of stages. They may only want to replace doors and windows or a heating system. We have to allow them to do this incrementally. We need to look at the way the one-stop shops are working. Many of them are shutting people down too quickly rather than engaging them. Most people believed the one-stop shop would provide them with an opportunity to discuss what they wanted to do and what was best for their particular property or premises. To my mind, that is not the way it is working. It needs to be a much better engagement and consultative process with members of the public. It may be a role for local authorities to do information days and road shows. We need to bring people on a collective journey. We have to realise that we want to do something very quickly but to do that we need to bring people with us. To bring people with us, we need to get buy-in.

The retrofit programme in the local authorities is encountering significant cost issues.

I have taken up this issue with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and I know some local authorities are looking at dropping the idea of the heat pump and the air-to-water system to try to save costs. I think that would be a retrograde step and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage needs to look at that. If it is the case that more funding needs to be given to this, we need to do it. The Government is enthusiastic about climate action, as, indeed, are the people of Ireland, but make it easier for them.

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