The difficulty we have is that we are constrained by the public health advice, which is based on the assessment of the need to reduce the amount of contact among the population. Under the level 5 restrictions, bus services are reduced to 25% capacity. That is the real difficulty. We are reviewing the situation on an ongoing basis but any change must be agreed by the public health officials and they do not want to change the rules and standards in the middle of a period of restrictions at a particular level. As I sa…

The draft text of the climate action and low carbon development (amendment) Bill was published on 7 October and referred for pre-legislative scrutiny at that time. Those proceedings provide a welcome opportunity for detailed examination and debate on the text of the Bill by members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action and by witnesses. The committee commenced pre-legislative scrutiny on 14 October and I understand it is ongoing. I have followed proceedings and note that a number of witnesses have att…

On the timing issue, when we first published the legislation I expressed the possibility that the pre-legislative scrutiny would be quite short and much shorter than usual. That is because there is a certain urgency in my mind in getting the Bill passed so that we can start implementing its measures next year. In that way we can include 2021 in the first five-year plan, and there is real urgency for us to raise our ambition on climate action. It has taken longer than I had originally expected but that is not unusua…

On that last point, we should be careful that we are comparing like with like because one of the unfortunate difficulties is we are starting on effectively a zero level not having achieved any of the reductions that we had expected by 2020 and for us to get to 51% is the full 51 yards. In the European Union, most of the countries are significantly ahead of us in the emissions reductions that they have already achieved and it is the equivalent of starting a 50 m race where they have a 20 m, and sometimes a 25 m, hea…

I might send on the script. As a personal reflection, and I hope I am not breaching a confidence here, the Taoiseach mentioned to me that he was speaking to President-elect Joe Biden this evening - he had to leave the Questions on Promised Legislation for that phone call. The Taoiseach said to me in the conversation one of the key points that President-elect Biden made was that they were going to be rejoining the Paris climate agreement. It was, for him, one of the key messages he wanted to get across in the conver…

It might be slightly above my pay grade but the Taoiseach might be writing to him. I hope we may be welcoming him here shortly because I think it has been reported that the President-elect is expecting to come here. On a related topic, I had a further meeting last week with the Governor of California, Mr. Gavin Newsom's top climate officials. This is not just at federal level but is also at state level. In those technological centres, in particular, where innovation is coming from, they are committed because they s…

The achievement of the goals set out in the Department’s statement of strategy are dependent on the efforts and professionalism of my staff and underpinned by the values set out in the Civil Service Renewal Plan. The Department, in its dealings with staff, stakeholders and citizens on actions to address climate change, including policies on smart meters, EV charging points and home retrofitting, is committed to the public service ethos of independence, integrity, impartiality, equality, fairness and respect. The pr…

Taking the issue of retrofitting, section 42(1) of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 states: A public body shall, in the performance of its functions, have regard to the need to— (a) eliminate discrimination, (b) promote equality of opportunity... I could go on but what we are doing with the retrofitting programme is meeting the requirement in that section. I cite the fact, and this is from memory, that of the €270-odd million in funding the Government has committed next year to retrofitting i…

This is part of a massive investment in the area. This is a project of a scale that is probably one of the biggest investment projects in the history of the State, and for the private sector as well. On the backlog, the Deputy is right there has been a severe backlog with the likes of the warmer homes scheme. That is one of the reasons that in the budget, as well as increasing the actual quantum we are providing, we got agreement for an additional 57 staff within the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, a…

The SEAI better energy warmer homes scheme delivers a range of energy efficiency measures free of charge to low-income households vulnerable to energy poverty. To date, more than 142,000 households have received free upgrades under the scheme, making their homes warmer, healthier and cheaper to run. The value of works carried out under the scheme now ranges between €5,800 and €28,500 per home, depending on the starting condition of the property and suitability for the measures available. Eligible homes are allocate…

I do not have the figure but I will ask the Department to come back to the Deputy directly on this. As I said, there will be significant carryover on this, as in other areas. A lot of this is because in the first Covid phase between March and June, the construction sector by and large, like the rest of the economy, was shut down. We still have ongoing issues in terms of building up the contractors' capability and capacity to deliver a lot of this work. The Government has been adopting the right approach in that in …

There is a lot of shaping up to be done. In truth, any underspend this year has been spent on our obligations regarding the European Union renewable heat targets, which we did not meet. We have had to buy our way out of that obligation. I would far prefer that we had spent the money on putting in new energy efficient homes with heat pumps so we would meet our renewable heat targets. There is a huge amount of shaping up to do. The Deputy is right with regard to the contractors. Perhaps a lot of contractors looked at…

Any contractor who is thinking forward, and they are doing so, will see this is an area they need-----

The high-speed broadband map, which is available at www.broadband.gov.ie , shows the areas in Cork which will be included in the national broadband plan. As of this week almost 122,000 premises across 25 counties have been surveyed by National Broadband Ireland, NBI, which is ahead of the full-year survey target of 120,000 that had been projected by the company. Of this figure, some 16,432 premises have been surveyed to date in Cork. This activity informs design solutions for the provision of the fibre network, and…

If Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan does not mind, I would like to also respond to what was said earlier by the Ceann Comhairle during a debate on a Topical Issue matter because the case he made is proper and important. We represent our constituents and at this moment in crisis, when people are dependent on these services, for them not to be able to get a response from the companies providing the services is a real issue of concern. Whatever about my comments and those of other Members, the fact that they came from the Ce…

At the Estimates committee meeting last week, a number of Deputies echoed Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan's comments by making the point that access to information, particularly in regard to roll-out plans, will be a key issue. I reverted to my Department during the week and we agreed that we need to look again at how we map out some of the work that is going to be done. It is hard at the moment because a lot of the work that is being done is survey work, so we will not know what the actual timeline is until that survey …

The Government statement on the role of data centres in Ireland's enterprise strategy acknowledges the role of data centres as part of the digital and communications infrastructure for many sectors of our economy. The statement also noted that data centres pose considerable challenges to the future planning and operation of Ireland’s power system. Such challenges arise in terms of renewable energy policy, generation adequacy, security of electricity supply and electricity customer costs. The programme for Governmen…

Every industry will have to operate within the planning framework where we go to net zero emissions by 2050 and 50% reduction in the next ten years. A key to that will be energy efficiency. We focus all the time on the generation side but efficiency is vital. Looking at the use of electricity across a range of different sectors, we have seen significant growth of our economy without a commensurate growth in electricity. We can do this. The development of data centres, and EirGrid is the key company which manages an…

We are starting an energy security review. It is looking at the wider context in terms of gas networks and so on but when one starts looking at it, one realises that to have a full review one has to see the full picture and that includes demand, which includes these operations and others. It is an important part of our economy. As the Deputy said, the data centres themselves are relatively small in terms of jobs but many of the companies operating them here have tens of thousands of workers in my constituency and i…

The Government is fully committed to supporting a significant expansion and modernisation of the electric vehicle charging network over the coming years. We have committed €10 million from the climate action fund to promote the charging network and this has leveraged a further €10 million investment from ESB. This intervention will result in 90 additional high-power chargers, each capable of charging two vehicles, 52 additional fast chargers, which may replace existing standard chargers, and 264 replacement standar…