As the relevant Minister, I will happily take the example the Deputy has raised and ask An Post why this is the case. We do not want State buildings lying vacant. I absolutely accept the Deputy’s point. I will raise it directly with the company myself.

I have to be upfront and honest with the Deputy. There are so many different stations I would love to introduce but we do have a limited budget. I have a budget of €35 billion and I have €100 billion worth of projects ready to go. The first additional station in that region will be in Moyross in the next two years. I believe a station in Ballysimon could have major strategic benefit and be of development potential for the city of Limerick, similarly the opening of the Shannon-Foynes line. I am absolutely supportive…

That is true but the reopening of Moyross and Ballysimon stations and of the Shannon-Foynes line, as well as the western rail corridor, are not funded in the existing NDP and do need to be funded. They will come first.

I am glad to open this important debate on the issue of how we afford protection for people who come to our country. Providing services and accommodation is hugely challenging and complex, and the circumstances have changed dramatically in the past three years. It is appropriate that we are giving time to discuss, debate and understand this issue. Going right back, this country has always been open to the world and to people coming here. Over the generations we have seen people arrive in Ireland and make it their h…

I am afraid my contribution was without a text.

The energy security package grounds Ireland's energy policy on three policy objectives: sustainability, affordability, and security. Action 2 of the package commits to standardising the approach used to evaluate the affordability of new and existing policy initiatives for consumers. My Department is committed to ensuring policies that have an impact on consumers are evidence-based, with costs minimised as far as possible, and assessed according to these policy objectives. The core driver of higher energy bills for …

There are two key reasons for those high bills, the first of which is the very distributed nature of our population, which makes it very expensive to provide the grid and other infrastructure to service every house. The other key fundamental is that we are still generating some half of our electricity from the use of gas. Those countries which have a high gas component in their electricity mix are seeing the highest prices. That will change. We are absolutely committed to deliver on the switch to renewables, rather…

We have one of the most distributed housing settlement patterns in Europe. There is no other country that has a similar pattern of one-off housing. It is expensive. The wires have to be brought to every house and that is by definition expensive. This is not going to change, but it is a reality. It is one of the reasons for high costs not just in electricity but also in water supply and other areas. It makes the infrastructure we have to provide for houses more expensive. That is to a certain extent something that w…

The national air quality monitoring stations are operated, maintained and monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency under the ambient air quality monitoring programme. My Department has provided funding for a significant upgrade to the network in recent years and the number of monitoring stations has increased from 29 in 2017 to 116 today. All stations collect air quality data for a range of pollutants to provide information to the public, and for assessment against European legal limit values and World Heal…

It is important that we continue to review, revise and amend, particularly with the airport changing and the new runway. We both know the series of issues that have arisen around different flight paths and so on. I would argue that the concerns of local residents in south Swords or other areas need to be listened to. I would be happy to assist the Deputy in engaging with Dublin Airport to make sure that whatever monitoring stations we have continue to assess those communities that might have a concern or a question…

I agree with the Deputy. We have to treat air quality absolutely seriously. There are 1,600 premature deaths each year due to air quality issues. We have taken significant action in this Government - actions that were put off by previous governments for decades - with regard to introducing standards around solid fuels, which is the key issue around impact, as science tells us. That is making a significant difference, as is the promotion of active travel, as the Deputy said, and other clean technologies. In fact, th…

As part of an enhanced package of SEAI retrofit supports, the heat pump grant has increased significantly, with grant support for an air-to-water heat pump of up to €6,500. For homeowners undertaking a deep retrofit under the national home energy upgrade scheme or the community energy grant scheme, additional grant support is available towards required heating system upgrades, as well as a bonus payment of €2,000 to eligible homeowners. This equates to a significant total potential grant of up to €10,500. The SEAI …

In terms of meeting targets under our retrofitting programme and improving the heating and insulation of homes-----

Yes, but the wider picture is that we massively exceeded our target last year, with 47,000 houses done and another 37,000 planned.

Heat pumps have been fitted in more than 3,700 homes, which was a 66% increase on the previous year. Yes, we need to go further and faster, and we will do that. In particular, we need to improve a lot of the online and other bureaucratic systems around heat pump supports, which are not as flexible and as fast as I would like to see, in order to deliver the scale and number of heat pump installations we need. We will accelerate that. The implication of the Deputy's question is that in hard-to-reach houses, the solut…

There is mounting international evidence and concern about the limited availability of sustainable HVO. I will happily share that with the Deputy. It is an international issue of real concern and we cannot ignore it. There is a whole variety of solutions. The first has to be, as we are doing now, improving the insulation capabilities of something like 50,000 houses a year, which will make them available and accessible for heat pump installation. We need to change the standards to allow for a wider deployment subjec…

In order to assist with the achievement of our retrofitting targets, the programme for Government, the climate action plan and the national retrofit plan committed to the introduction of a new residential retrofit low-cost loan scheme. The home energy upgrade loan scheme was developed by my Department in conjunction with the Department of Finance, the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, the SEAI, the European Investment Bank, EIB, and the European Investment Fund. An agreement with the EIB Group underpinning …

It is frustrating that it is taking longer than I would have liked. The main reason is that this is a first for the European Investment Bank and the European institutions. They have never before engaged in direct lending support to consumers. They have to get it right and make sure all their qualifying criteria and all the processing adheres to European law and so on. That is the reason it is happening later than I would have liked. The scheme will begin this quarter. It is coming in the coming weeks. I cannot anno…

What I am getting is a lot of people in other European countries and the UK looking at what is happening in Ireland and saying it is a model they need to follow. As I said to Deputy O'Rourke earlier, we are seeing unprecedented levels of retrofitting taking place. It is way ahead of target.

We are significantly ahead of B2 targets. It is not just about retrofitting; the Deputy is right to focus on microgeneration where there has also been a phenomenal increase, both domestic and non-domestic, in the uptake of the grants. We are providing very significant grants to encourage people to avail of solar PV. Yes, we will go further on that and a range of different measures because the scale change we need to make is huge. Another recent development, which I am sure the Deputy has been selling to her own con…