Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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580. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his plans to increase investment in the SEAI in order to achieve almost 30% emissions reduction targets for 2030. [26090/19]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The government recently approved and published the Climate Action Plan which sets out how we will meet our 2030 emissions targets and put us on the right trajectory to reach net zero emissions by 2050. This includes highly ambitious targets across the public and enterprise sectors as well as the built environment.

The Climate Action Plan sets out the actions which we will need to take in order to deliver on these targets. This includes commitments related to the introduction of new delivery models to minimise the cost of retrofits as well as the further development and optimisation of Government funding and grant schemes to drive demand for retrofits and deliver value for money. The Climate Action Plan will be updated annually.

The SEAI will have a key role to play in many of the measures and initiatives set out in the plan.

The government has significantly increased the level of resources allocated to the SEAI in recent years both in terms of capital allocation to expand the number and scale of supports and schemes available – and, importantly, to expand their human resources. This has enabled the Authority to grow its expertise and add new functions such as the organisation’s Behavioural Economics Unit. These developments will make a significant contribution to the achievement of national energy efficiency and carbon reduction goals.

Decisions in relation to any additional resource allocations for the SEAI from 2020 will be made in the context of the ambitious programme of measures set out in the Climate Action Plan, the 2020 Estimates process and the c.€5 billion funding identified in Project Ireland 2040 to support energy efficiency and related measures in the period 2018-2027.