Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and Deputy O'Rourke for their contributions on the report. I will not go back into the detail but I will attempt to address some of the comments that were made.

We have to distinguish between what we are trying to do in the short term, the medium term and the long term. In the long term, the goal is to retrofit all of our housing stock so that people will live in the energy future I have been talking about. Deputy O'Rourke made reference to that timeframe of 200 years. We accept that 200 years would be in no way acceptable but we do not actually believe that is how long it will take. Over the course of this Government's term, we have created an industry. I see very interesting things happening down in Waterford and Wexford ETB. Trained people, people who are already craftsmen, are being called in for short supplemental courses. That means they are now ready for the economy of the future. In setting out 2030 targets and providing for that €8 billion out to 2030, we have created certainty for an industry. We have said there are jobs in this and there will be employment in it into the future. More and more tradespeople are moving into it. That is why we are seeing such significant movement in the number of homes retrofitted each year.

That also speaks to one of the other concerns Deputy O'Rourke raised, which had regard to where we target the resource. It was important that we built the sector, that we gave it a very clear signal and that we allowed people with their own private resources to come into it as well. The industry is then built not just on Government money alone, but also on the money of people who can afford to make the transition. We are telling them to make that investment in their property, that it is a great long-term investment and that it will lower their energy bills and increase the value of their poverty. We are bringing that private money into play. That is important. I share the Deputy's concerns about equity but I do not believe Government investment alone would have been enough to unlock the industry. No one on the Government side of the House would pretend the national retrofit scheme is perfect as it is right now. There has been an awful lot of movement over the course of the lifetime of this Government, however. As with any programme of investment, it will need to be refined as we move on. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to focus on those people who are furthest behind first. The Minister of State outlined some of the progress on targeting those E-, F- and G-rated homes. A waiting time of 17 months is still far longer than I would like but it is a significant improvement over a relatively short period of time.

That is the long-term goal. That is where we want to get to. In the short term, this Government has given cash transfers. That is the simplest and quickest thing we could do. That is where the energy credits come from. There are focused energy credits through the improvements that have been made to the fuel allowance and some of those lump sums that have been paid out to people who are on social protection payments. Then there are the more generalised energy credits. Some of the criticism of those generalised energy credits is warranted. They are not targeted and they represent a significant expenditure of money. However, they make sure that those people who are not as readily identifiable through the social protection system but who absolutely need support are reached. There was a decision to be made. We could have accidentally given some money to people who may not have needed it or we could have missed out on a large cohort who are struggling to meet their energy costs.

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On balance, while I might share some of the reservations that have been outlined on this previously, I think we have got that balance right. It was important that the State helped people, particularly in a time in a huge spike of energy costs. What will we do in the medium term? How can we reach people? I do not for a minute accept that it will be 200 years before they begin to feel the benefit of the energy transition. Maybe it is not in the next five years or next ten years or indeed for older people. My father turned 81 just last week and he was talking about installation of solar. He is mad to install a bit of solar but he was kind of realistic about the payback period. He was talking about putting solar up on the house and said, "Sure, maybe you will get the benefit of it in the longer term." On whether an older person should engage in a deep energy retrofit, if I am in my 80s, do I want to move out of my house while they are doing a deep retrofit? What if I am in social housing stock and do not have the wherewithal to pull the trigger on this investment myself? Is there a way that we can reach these people in the medium term that will give them some of the benefit of this energy transition?

EnergyCloud is well able to hang its own drum. It is very good at it. I get tagged in on the same posts as Deputy O'Rourke. It is worth pointing out that that is something that can be delivered in the relatively short term that really gives people who need it a benefit of this energy transition. There are other things that we can do in this space. One of the initiatives of the Greens in Austria has been around energy-efficient white goods for people in lower-income homes. That is to say, if people are replacing their washing machine, the type of thing for which there are already grants in the social welfare system, instead of getting the poorly energy rated one, they get the better energy rated one. That gives somebody a dividend from this energy transition. I think that is important.

We were speaking about the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and the interpretation of smart meter data. That is something that can be done that has all sorts of benefits. If we take people in a household that is suffering from energy poverty, make common-sense recommendations to them about the energy plan that they are availing of that will save them money, and we make recommendations to them about shifting their usage of energy, that has wider implications not just for the person living in that household but how we integrate renewables onto the grid. This is good, common sense for many people. We have to look at this. The short-term intervention in the form of cash transfer will stay there in the form of the fuel allowance. We need to look at how we treat fuel allowance in the future. The longer-term vision is to get everybody into those energy efficient, retrofitted, healthier, warmer, cheaper homes with a dividend for the environment. Are there things we can do in the medium term? Are there common-sense interventions that we can use to reach people who are furthest behind and say that this energy transition is not just for the wealthy but is something that benefits them, their community and the wider environment? That is something we really need to work on.

Regarding the criticism of carbon tax, let us be truthful that any tax on consumption can be criticised for being regressive because it will have a greater impact on those people with lower levels of disposable income. There is another way of reading the carbon tax, which is to say that the top decile use approximately eight times more carbon than the bottom decile. People who are on the highest incomes will pay, roughly speaking, eight times the amount of carbon tax. The usage is critical. The criticism that I would accept from Deputy O'Rourke is about the 40% of the ring-fenced money from the raising of the carbon tax. There is the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. I am also a member of the Committee of Public Accounts. If we are saying to people that there is a price signal around the use of carbon, which I believe there needs to be, we have to be sure that it is being spent in a way that reaches the people who most need this help and that the people furthest behind are the ones who are being reached more.

I think this has been a useful debate. Deputy O'Rourke mentioned that Deputies Ó Laoghaire and Paul Donnelly from Sinn Féin sit on the committee. It is a collegiate and cross-party committee. The chairmanship of Deputy Naughten is critical in that too. We were trying to do good with this report. There was no grandstanding or showboating. The members of the committee really worked well together to formulate what I think are good quality recommendations. I hope the Minister of State will be able to bring this back to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to say there are recommendations that can be actioned in the short, medium and long term to make sure that more of our people begin to live in that energy future that is critical both for the well-being of our people and the well-being of our planet, and that we can really begin to unlock a triple benefit whereby we benefit people and our economy locally and nationally, and we would have a positive impact in the wider world too. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the time to have this debate this evening. I really hope this is not a report set to sit on a shelf but that some of the recommendations can be actioned.

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