Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 8, line 38, after “Oireachtas” to insert the following: “excluding those monies which were allocated to budget sub-heads related to the prevention of energy poverty”.

Amendments Nos. 4 and 21 are linked in that the budget subheads of the money that would be funding this particular initiative would not be coming from money that has already been allocated to the prevention of energy poverty. That comes on the back of freedom of information, FOI, requests that have already been made. The Minister is saying that this is an energy poverty measure, but we do not want it to come out of money that has been allocated to other areas of energy poverty, including retrofitting. That is because in the FOIs, it was indicated that that is where the money is coming from. We are saying that this should be new funding that should be given towards energy poverty, given the level of the crisis. It should not come out of existing funding.