Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is mounting international evidence and concern about the limited availability of sustainable HVO. I will happily share that with the Deputy. It is an international issue of real concern and we cannot ignore it. There is a whole variety of solutions. The first has to be, as we are doing now, improving the insulation capabilities of something like 50,000 houses a year, which will make them available and accessible for heat pump installation. We need to change the standards to allow for a wider deployment subject to the study I instanced in my first response. We need to look at a whole range of other solutions, including district heating. Going back to the original district heating study, we think we could cover something like half the homes in the country if we really went for district heating at scale. Other options including biomethane can be developed as a heat energy source that is sustainable. We can manage the land use implications of it.

There is a variety of solutions, as I have outlined. We absolutely must target the houses that are the least efficient and have the highest smoky fuel content. That is why we put half the carbon tax money we give to heating into the warmer homes scheme, social housing and other targeted solutions. The households involved often tend to be the poorer homes and that is why we particularly use the carbon tax to address that sector.

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