Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the House and I commend him on the energy and capacity he brings to the Department. Only a few hours ago, we were both in County Cavan witnessing the good work of a company, KORE, which takes a collective community approach to retrofitting and reducing carbon emissions with great success. We are proud to say we have a number of other successful companies in Cavan but the flagship company at the vanguard of all insulation work and new technologies is Kingspan, which has an international status.

I also acknowledge the announcements by the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, that he is increasing SEAI grants and that, as Senator Coffey noted, 24,000 houses were retrofitted in 2016, which represent major progress. These announcements are a step in the right direction and as the economy grows there will be a need to increase those grants to achieve a greater take-up.

It is disturbing that Ireland's emissions increased by 3.5% between 2015 and 2016. We understand it in the context of growth in the economy of up to 5% but it is not where we want to be. Any potential fines need to be headed off in order that we can use the money domestically to incentivise measures to avoid the fines, though I assume this logic is not lost on the Minister.

As we increase broadband coverage, more people will work at home and this will reduce emissions in the transport sector. I want to see broadband in every home in Cavan-Monaghan in the next year or two and I was at the launch, with the IFA, of Eir broadband, a commercial activity into which there is also Government input. We have a huge tradition in my area of the co-operative movement, including the creamery movement, and we have some of the most successful co-ops in the country such as Lakeland Dairies and Glanbia. They all grew out of small local co-ops and there is a precedent for buy-in to the movement. The Minister of State, who comes from the neighbouring county of Meath, needs to look at this as there is huge untapped potential for co-operative community wind turbines and generators. The community would have collective ownership of the generators to provide energy to homes and surplus energy to the grid, yielding an income. There is also individual microgeneration. We could put solar panels on houses using the co-operative system and we should look at this. I ask the Minister of State to indicate whether he thinks this could be piloted or incentivised.

In the agricultural sector, the potential for digesters is enormous both for generating energy and for lowering carbon emissions. Car pooling also needs to be done and can be incentivised, as can electric cars. The retrofitting of local authority houses is a very important project and I hope it continues. There has been considerable progress in Cavan-Monaghan and across the country and 58,000 homes are targeted in the current programme. What are the Minister of State's views on getting all our local authority houses completed in this regard?