Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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12. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his views that Ireland is significantly underperforming in the development of a substantial insulation and retrofit programme as a means to conserve energy and create employment. [3912/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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While I agree with the Deputy that insulation and retrofitting are vital to conserving energy and boosting domestic employment, I do not accept that Ireland is underperforming in this area.

Under the range of Better Energy Schemes administered on behalf of my Department by SEAI, energy efficiency retrofitting has been supported in over 163,000 homes, while almost 112,000 homes in energy poverty have received free energy efficiency improvements. A further 9,600 homes have received funding as part of community energy efficiency iniatives. In total, nearly one sixth of all homes in the country have received a Government supported energy efficiency upgrade. The Better Energy Programme will be continued in 2015 with expenditure of €40m planned.

To build on this progress, and to embed energy efficiency in the supply chain, last year I introduced an energy efficiency obligation on energy suppliers. This places a mandatory requirement on energy suppliers to work with all categories of customer, including those in energy poverty, to deliver energy efficiency improvements. The aim of this scheme is to increase the scale, and reach, of energy efficiency projects. Similar projects are already in operation in other EU states and internationally.

It is clear that increasing the scale of energy efficiency action in both the private, and public, sectors requires commercial funding. This is why the National Energy Efficiency Fund was launched in 2014. This type of initiative is critical to supporting the scale of energy efficiency deployment necessary to maintain our progress to 2020 and to lay the foundations for continued action to 2030. Energy efficiency will be key to a cost effective and technically feasible contribution by Ireland to the objectives of the EU 2030 Climate and Energy Framework.