Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government allocated €380 million to retrofitting this year, more than half of which is dedicated to providing 100% free retrofitting to low-income households and those at risk of energy poverty. Anybody in the country would have to acknowledge that the retrofitting programme has been a transformation in the past four years. If we did not have the carbon tax, we could not do that and we would not have developed an industry around retrofitting. The industry knows that for the next decade, funds will be available to retrofit homes and buildings to make sure we are more energy efficient.

On the lower-income and social protection side, it was recommended that we would guard against fuel poverty for people on welfare and on the lowest incomes. Some €262 million has been allocated to other targeted social protection payments this year. Approximately 400,000 low-income households have benefited from our significantly expanded and increased fuel allowance schemes in past winters. My understanding of the report referred to by the Deputy is that its authors felt the breakdown on social protection was not as precise as they would have liked. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that significant funding has been allocated to the fuel poverty area.

Farming is an area close to the Deputy’s heart. This is helping our farmers and farm families directly. In 2024, €113 million in carbon tax funding has been allocated to agri-environmental schemes specifically. In the time ahead, we need to do more for farmers. We need to give further and increased funding to farmers to deal with the issues and challenges they have in respect of the climate change agenda, but also in terms of biodiversity and nature restoration, so there is sufficient incentivisation and revenue streams for the farming community to enable them to address the issues they face. Many in the agriculture industry have engaged more than those in other sectors on this issue. They tend to bring a more detailed approach to the issues at farm level, which has been my experience when I engage with farmers.

There are three pillars to it: the fuel poverty pillar, the retrofitting and energy-efficiency pillar and the agri-environmental pillar. That is where the funding is going from the carbon tax.

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