Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 10 Oct 2024

I move:

That Dáil Éireann shall take note of the Report of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands entitled "Report on Energy Poverty 2024", copies of which were laid before Dáil Éireann on 24th June, 2024.

I am taking this as Leas-Chathaoirleach of the committee. The Cathaoirleach, tragically, is burying his brother, John Naughten, today. It is a sad time for the House. Not only has Deputy Naughten suffered a bereavement, I have just heard the Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, has suffered a bereavement in his family as well. I acknowledge the great leadership our Cathaoirleach has shown on the committee, particularly on this issue of energy poverty.

There is a quote I have used often in this House and I will use it again. It is from the science fiction writer William Gibson. He said the future is already here, just unevenly distributed. This sticks with me because it is self-evident around the issue of energy poverty and retrofitting. There are people already living in the energy future. They live in a highly rated, energy-efficient home, be it an A-rated or B-rated home. Perhaps they have enough money to retrofit or perhaps they have bought a new property recently, so their energy bills are naturally lower. They might have been able to afford to put a solar array on the roof, maybe a significant one, so they are generating their own electricity.

I know many people in the fortunate situation of having positive energy bills. Not only are they using the electricity off their roof, but they are generating a surplus, that surplus is feeding back into the grid and they are being paid for it. That was a welcome initiative of this Government. They are making money from their electricity, especially in the summertime months or the four peak months for electricity generation.

Some households are fortunate enough to have an EV in the driveway. They can drive on sunshine, particularly during the summer months. In June, the sun might be shining and they will plug their car into their solar panels and drive for free. This is the energy future we want all households to attain. We want all households to live in warm, healthy, retrofitted houses where their energy consumption and, therefore, their energy bills are lower and they can avail of all the benefits that come along with that. Perhaps that involves generating their own electricity and generating a small bit of income from that. The health benefits of living in a high-performing home are enormous. However, that is not the reality. The future is already here but it is unevenly distributed. There are many people, often the poorest in our society, living in poorly insulated homes. They could be F-rated or G-rated homes. Often it is older social housing stock. It does not matter how many shovels of coal you put on the fire when most of the heat and most of your money is going up the chimney. I remember from my childhood when your face is warm and your back is cold. Thankfully it is not my experience now but it is the experience of many households in this country. People, often older people, bank up the fire for the evening and once it goes out at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., the temperature of the house drops like a stone and they wake up to a cold house in the morning. That is not a situation we want any of our people to be in.

Energy poverty is a complex issue affecting many households globally and is becoming an urgent concern in Ireland. As we aim for a sustainable and greener future, it is vital nobody is left struggling to meet basic energy needs. High energy costs, low household incomes and energy-inefficient housing make life harder for many families. The impact of energy poverty is not just financial; it also affects people's health and well-being. People should not have to worry about whether they can boil the kettle or put the immersion on to have a bath. That should not be one of the things that weigh on their mental well-being.

Energy poverty has been an item of the committee's work between 2023 and 2024, mainly because of the ongoing rise in living costs. The committee began its public meetings in this context in May 2023 and concluded in February 2024. The report makes 41 recommendations spanning three key areas, namely, retrofitting of homes in rural and urban areas, the suitability of the fuel allowance and the impact of energy poverty on mental and physical health. In its scrutiny of energy poverty, the committee held meetings with officials from the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; and with representatives from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, EnergyCloud, Irish Rural Link, Friends of the Earth and the Irish Cancer Society. The committee also invited written submissions from interested groups and individuals.

The contributions from the Irish Cancer Society stuck with me most from the sessions we had. It was not an area I expected to be most affected but night nurses told us of people on their death bed, surrounded by family wearing overcoats and hats because the person dying could not afford the energy costs or was ashamed to ask for help with energy costs to heat their home as they died. Hearing that personal testimony from the night nurses affected me greatly. A range of recommendations in the report deal with the issue of people who receive a terminal diagnosis and how the State, in my view, should be kinder to those people.

Energy poverty in Ireland is multifaceted. In many cases it is driven by three root causes, namely, high energy expenditure in proportion to household budget, low levels of income and low energy performance of buildings and appliances. Poor people's energy bills are often higher than wealthier people's, for those reasons. Households with higher energy needs, which include families with children, persons with disabilities and older persons, are also more susceptible to energy poverty and its effects. To put it in simple terms, those families spend more time at home. An older person generally spends more time at home than a person who is out working and therefore will be more susceptible to the impacts of energy poverty. It is imperative in the colder weeks and months of the year that those most vulnerable in our society have sufficient heat in their homes to stay healthy and well.

One thing that frustrates me about how we do our budgeting and our business in this House is the silo effect. I firmly believe that investment in the prevention of energy poverty viewed across the totality of the budget would, because of its positive impacts, especially in health expenditure, represent extremely good value for money.

My time will not allow me to go into the recommendations in full but I do want to speak to a number of the points. I will begin with recommendation No. 2. There are a number of recommendations dealing with the issue of the private rented sector. It is the split incentive. If we invest in retrofit, it is the tenant who benefits and the tenant's bills that would fall. The landlord's bills will not fall, so what incentive is there for a landlord to invest in his rental property? We need both carrot and stick in this. We have a commitment in Housing for All to implement minimum energy efficiency standards within our rental stock. That is the stick. I believe we also need to look very seriously at a carrot. We must say to the landlords that if they invest in their property, which will lead to better health outcomes and better energy outcomes for the people who live in their property, the State will help them with that. However that is designed, I do believe there is an incentive there. There is a clear issue around this specific area.

The committee recommends a review and update of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland's overall mandate to include a greater focus on supporting those most at risk of energy poverty. We talk about a wrap-around service in this regard. The warmer home scheme is excellent but it is oversubscribed. We are putting more money into it, which was decided in this budget. It is partially funded through the carbon tax, which is often vilified but that revenue raised goes to very important places, including into the retrofitting of the homes of people who are on lower incomes. It is very important. We need to invest more in that for sure. For those people, however, who perhaps have the wherewithal financially to invest in retrofitting, it is not easy. Undertaking a deep retrofit of your house is not going to be easy anyway. It is a significant building and home improvement project but it is also difficult to try to jump through the hoops to get the grants, to get the three quotes, and to understand the differences and why those are different prices. There are tog values coming back and how in God's name would a person be able to discern value for money between these things? We need to support people in that. We need to make the business of retrofitting our homes a lot easier, and we also need to do that in terms of cost.

There have been significant improvements under this Government with the reduction to 0% of VAT on solar panels and the announcement recently in the budget of a similar move with a reduction the VAT level, if not to zero, on heat pumps. This will put it financially into more people's reach. We need to make it easier again. If I cannot get my head around it as a Deputy with the Green Party and at this full time, how can I expect a normal a person to navigate the process?

We need to look at smart meters and the role of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, in this. Again, this is another area where I am bamboozled when I look at my energy usage. First of all, getting access to my smart meter usage is not as straightforward as it should be. When I get it, it is very difficult to interpret that energy usage. Any layperson wants to be able to say what represents best value for money based on the range of plans. We know a lot of people on lower fixed incomes will often go with a prepaid provider, which means their unit energy costs are locked in, and these are not the best value unit energy costs. What if the CRU were mandated with making that smart meter information available to the consumer in a legible and comprehensible fashion and then making common-sense recommendations, either on the type of rate a person should be on or how a person could shift energy usage patterns? These could be simple things like not having the dryer on between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. because this is the time it will cost the most money. Trying to shift the energy usage also has a big benefit to the grid if we do that sort of movement.

There are also issues with the fuel allowance. This goes back to a general issue and social welfare rates. We really need to be benchmarking this. There has been movement under this Government but there has also been a huge spike in energy costs. The expansion of the fuel allowance does not always keep pace with that.

I want to speak to the situations of end of life or those with a terminal diagnosis. There are a number of recommendations in this regard:

The Committee recommends the provision of automatic entitlement to the Household Benefits Package, Fuel Allowance payment and Additional Needs Payment to people with a life-limiting diagnosis, including children, without means-testing. This would use the existing definition of someone who is diagnosed with a terminal illness with an estimated 24 months or fewer to live, as is used in the case of Emergency Medical Cards.

Another aspect that was discussed at the committee, and which is not very well known, is the solar PV scheme for medically vulnerable homes. This would be for people who have that extra cost, perhaps medical equipment in their homes or who, because of their medical diagnosis, must spend more time at home. This very good scheme is available for putting solar PV on the house to help lessen the cost. I am not sure there is awareness of that. It is certainly something I learned during the course of the committee.

I will not have time to speak in detail to many more of the recommendations. I do, however, want to mention EnergyCloud. The Minister of State is probably aware it does excellent work. We know renewable electricity is intermittent and there are times when the wind is blowing, particularly during the middle of the night, and we have no place to put that electricity as we do not have the battery storage yet. EnergyCloud has come up with a very good and very common-sense solution whereby if we know extra electricity will be generated, people in low-income households would get a text message saying their hot water tank was going to be heated. Rather than waste that energy we could put it into heating the water in low-energy homes. That would be really good usage.

I go back to that original quote, "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed", and consider the commitment we have under the sustainable development goals to reach the furthest behind first. We need to redouble our efforts. There are people who are living in that energy future, which is great and is good news for them that they had the wherewithal, financially and intellectually, to navigate the hoops they needed to jump through. We need to reach the people who are living in energy poor homes, who are living less healthy lives as a result, and redouble our efforts in this energy transition in order that those who are furthest behind are reached and brought with us on this energy transition.

Gabhaim buíochas don choiste as ucht an obair thábhachtach seo agus an deis é a phlé. I join Deputy Ó Cathasaigh and, I am sure, the House in expressing my deepest sympathy to the Cathaoirleach of the committee, Deputy Denis Naughten, on the untimely passing of his brother John. Our thoughts and our prayers are with Naughten family in these very dark days.

I thank the committee members and the secretariat for the work they have done in preparing this report. As Deputy Ó Cathasaigh has said, the high cost of energy has had a significant impact on the cost of living for many people, particularly in recent years as brought on by volatility in international markets. The Government introduced a suite of measures over that time to help households deal with the rising cost of electricity. In 2022, we saw the introduction of the Electricity Costs (Domestic Electricity Accounts) Emergency Measures Act, which provided for a one-off credit of €200 to be applied to all domestic electricity accounts. This was followed by two subsequent rounds of emergency credits announced in budgets 2023 and 2024. Together, these credits facilitated a transfer of €1,250 to more than 2.2 million households at a cost of approximately €2.75 billion. This is in addition to one-off increases to certain social welfare recipients such as those in receipt of the fuel allowance, pensioners, working families, carers, those living with a disability, and those in receipt of child benefit.

Inclusive of the costs of the universal energy credit and targeted groups across 2022, 2023 and 2024, the Government provided €7.1 billion worth of supports in acknowledgement of the energy crisis and cost-of-living crisis, which was a direct result of the inflationary pressure of increased energy costs. Further action was needed, however, and this is why we also introduced the largest social welfare package in the history of the State, providing €2.6 billion to assist households in budget 2025. This will be discussed next week.

Among the measures in place to assist people with the cost of energy to heat and light homes are an electricity costs emergency benefit payment of €250, including VAT, for an estimated 2.263 million domestic electricity accounts to be paid in two instalments; one in 2024 and the second in 2025. There will be a €300 cost-of-living lump-sum payment to all households getting fuel allowance, to be paid in November 2024. This means recipients will receive a total of €1,224 this winter, which includes their fuel allowance payments and the related lump sum.

There will be an increased means threshold for fuel allowance, extended to those aged 66 and over from January 2025, meaning more people will qualify for this very important support.

However, as Deputy Ó Cathasaigh said, there are more long-term and deeper structural issues mentioned in this report. Given that energy poverty is influenced not only by the cost of energy and a person’s income but also by the energy efficiency of their home, I welcome the prominence that Deputy Ó Cathasaigh and the committee have given to the issue of retrofitting. It is useful to inform the House about the measures introduced by the Government.

The national retrofit plan sets out how the Government is delivering on these retrofit targets. The national plan is designed to address barriers to retrofit across four key pillars: driving demand and activity; financing and funding; ensuring we have supply chain, skills and standards in place, and governance of those standards. For each pillar, barriers were identified and time-bound policies, measures and actions were put in place to address them.

The initiatives in the plan are also guided by a number of key principles, including: ensuring fairness to all and supporting a just transition; embracing a universal approach covering all housing types and consumer segments; and designing customer-centric solutions to reduce the costs and complexity, making the process easier for those investing in retrofit. However, I fully subscribe to Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's remarks regarding the complexity in this space.

The national retrofit plan is underpinned by a financial allocation of €8 billion to 2030, €5 billion of which will be sourced from carbon tax revenue. This year, a total of €527 million across Government has been allocated to support retrofit. Of this amount, a record total of €300 million will be spent on providing fully funded upgrades through the SEAI’s dedicated energy poverty schemes and local authority retrofits. I am happy to report that funding for these schemes will be increased further next year, with a €330 million allocation for the SEAI’s dedicated energy poverty schemes and local authority retrofits.

The retrofit plan is working, as can be clearly seen from the increasing levels of delivery in recent years. Last year saw over 47,900 home-energy upgrades supported by the SEAI. Almost 5,900 of those homes were fully funded upgrades under the warmer homes scheme with a further 730 approved housing body homes, AHB, upgraded under other SEAI schemes. Separately, more than 2,250 homes were upgraded under the Department of housing-funded local authority energy efficiency programme.

This year is on track to be another record year of progress under the SEAI schemes. To the end of September, 38,000 homes were upgraded, including 5,255 free upgrades under the warmer homes scheme. Local authority output figures will be available at the end of the year.

The committee’s report made a number of recommendations regarding the warmer homes scheme, which provides free energy upgrades for households at risk of energy poverty, as spoken about by Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. Since February 2022, the scheme has put a particular focus on the worst-performing properties by prioritising homes built and occupied before January 1993 and that have a pre-works building energy rating, BER, of E, F or G. This has had the impact of significantly reducing waiting times for these homes, which are most in need of support. These E , F and G-rated homes now have an average delivery time of 17 months, which is a reduction of nine months compared to 2022. Better performing homes have an average delivery time of 20 months, a reduction of six months compared to 2022. The reductions in the average waiting times for both cohorts of homes have been achieved in part through the following actions: the SEAI has been allocated additional staff for the warmer homes scheme; active contract engagement and management to increase contractor output; actions to address ongoing supply chain and inflationary pressures; a record budget allocation of €208.8 million for 2024 and a new €700 million contractor panel has been put in place for the next four years, which has increased contractor capacity to 36.

The committee's report has noted the difficulties with upgrading older homes that were constructed using more traditional methods. I suspect that many of us have experienced those personally. Wall insulation is not recommended under any of the SEAI’s residential energy efficiency schemes on dwellings built before 1940, which are constructed in stone, single-leaf masonry or composite wall construction. This is because standard or modern retrofit solutions are often not suitable for these buildings, as they can lead to adverse and unintended consequences such as damp and mould, and affect the health and well-being of the people living there. However, we recognise that these homes also need to be upgraded and significant work has taken place to develop a pilot scheme to upgrade traditional buildings. Works taking place under the pilot will be guided by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage’s guidance on Energy Efficiency in Traditional Buildings. The pilot will commence later this year and an interim evaluation will be prepared in Q2 of 2025 to inform any future development required.

All home upgrades will be completed by Q4 of 2025, with a final report on the pilot findings to be delivered by the end of January 2026. In the meantime, the SEAI is actively reviewing homes applying under the warmer homes scheme to ensure that shallow measures are maximised where they are not suitable for deeper upgrades. This includes heating system controls, LEDs and lagging jackets by way of examples. It is important to note though that in practice, the SEAI is finding that in many cases, such measures are already in place in the homes, so accordingly, this initiative will be kept under review.

Many households that need support are not eligible for the warmer homes scheme. This is why a range of supports are available through the SEAI, including: a special enhanced grant rate for attic and cavity wall insulation; schemes supporting a step-by-step approach that allows homeowners to retrofit their home in stages over a number of years; and a new home energy upgrade loan scheme, which will help reduce the financial challenges for many homeowners and will play a crucial role in helping homeowners to invest in energy efficiency.

I thank Deputy Ó Cathasaigh for his considered overview of the report and, in particular, the light he shed on the submission by the Irish Cancer Society. That is not a position that anyone wants any family member or loved one to be in as they approach the end of life. I will draw my colleagues' attention to this.

The Government is committed to providing practical supports for those experiencing energy poverty and who want to upgrade the efficiency of their home. During the course of its term in office, I think the Government has shown exceptional commitment in this area.

I too extend my deepest sympathies to Deputy Naughten on the loss of his brother. I do not sit on this committee but Deputy Naughten chairs the Friends of Science Group in the Oireachtas. My deepest sympathies to him and his family at this difficult time.

I commend the committee on its work on this. I apologise on behalf of Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire who was due to take this but is unavailable at this time. It is a really important topic. I watched a number of the meetings and discussed with Deputy Ó Laoghaire some of the issues at the time. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh mentioned EnergyCloud Ireland. The company tagged me and many others, I am sure, in its online posts in the last 24 hours. The company stated that €10.28 million worth of energy was wasted last week due to constraints on the grid. That is the equivalent of 25,718 MW hours of power, which is enough to heat 8.5 million hot water tanks. EnergyCloud's initiative is really helping people at risk of, or living in energy poverty. It is a very practical measure but it is very clear that there is much greater potential for it.

Regarding the national retrofitting plan, we have been at loggerheads with Government on it. Our central argument is that there is not enough focus on energy poverty metrics and lifting people out of energy poverty in the national retrofitting plan. I have had lots of over and back with the Minister, Deputy Ryan, on this specific measure. We recognise the investment in it, although Sinn Féin would do the same and more. We also recognise the amount of work that is under way but, for us, there are fundamental gaps as regards equity.

We can pick at the numbers that have been outlined but I am really just hoping to set out our position. My colleague, Deputy Gould, was here yesterday when we had a debate on something or other and he gave the example of the social housing retrofitting programme. He said that, in either the city or county of Cork, based on current progress, it would take 200 years to retrofit the homes in that city or county. It is similar elsewhere. The programme is built in such a way that it is only going to hit a fraction of those houses out to 2030. I welcome the fact that there is a pilot programme that is to report in the second quarter of next year but we in Sinn Féin have been proposing a targeted scheme for people whose homes are heated with solid fuels. That is something that Social Justice Ireland, Friends of the Earth and others have echoed. We have a similar proposal regarding the potential of solar PV.

In all of this, questions need to be asked. There is very significant State investment and an awful lot of work being done. Industries are scaling up, matching that ambition from Government. We have to ask who is benefiting from it, however. We want everybody to benefit from it but the inverse care law comes into it. We met with people making the case for a DEIS plus programme in the audiovisual room earlier. Their argument was that they represent the most vulnerable communities. Everybody is getting free school meals and these other measures. We need a specific targeted measure that recognises the 50 or 100 schools. The inverse care law means that those who need this stuff the most should be getting the most of it.

Another point the Minister of State has made is a bone of contention between Government and those of us in the Opposition. I refer to the issue of carbon tax. We argue that we can match Government spend on climate action but that we would raise the money in a different way. The Government makes a different point. It points towards the year-on-year investment and the timeline out to 2030. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report from 2023 said that in and around 40% of the so-called ring-fenced money was not properly accounted for. Putting the argument aside, if the Government is saying that it is ring-fencing this money to address fuel poverty through social welfare schemes, the retrofitting plan and agriculture schemes, that money needs to be accounted for. The Comptroller and Auditor General has clearly said that those systems are not in place. That needs to be addressed. If there was a change of government, there might be an entirely different approach to carbon tax but is scéal eile é sin.

On the energy poverty strategy, for a long time during the term of this Government, we have argued that we need to get the strategy updated. It needs to be a priority focus. It needs to be central to everything we do. When we talk to the stakeholders about it, they talk about difficulties with the quality of data. Let us get those datasets talking to one other and let us get the researchers within Government agencies such as the SEAI and ESRI using them to best effect so that we can identify those people and areas most in need and respond to them.

My final point is on the cost of electricity, the potential role for communities and the need for aggressive and progressive reforms of the energy sector to drive down the cost of energy. While it is of course welcome to give money to people through energy credits at the end of every year, it is not sustainable. We need those fundamental reforms. I commend the report and all of the work that went into it.

I thank the Minister of State and Deputy O'Rourke for their contributions on the report. I will not go back into the detail but I will attempt to address some of the comments that were made.

We have to distinguish between what we are trying to do in the short term, the medium term and the long term. In the long term, the goal is to retrofit all of our housing stock so that people will live in the energy future I have been talking about. Deputy O'Rourke made reference to that timeframe of 200 years. We accept that 200 years would be in no way acceptable but we do not actually believe that is how long it will take. Over the course of this Government's term, we have created an industry. I see very interesting things happening down in Waterford and Wexford ETB. Trained people, people who are already craftsmen, are being called in for short supplemental courses. That means they are now ready for the economy of the future. In setting out 2030 targets and providing for that €8 billion out to 2030, we have created certainty for an industry. We have said there are jobs in this and there will be employment in it into the future. More and more tradespeople are moving into it. That is why we are seeing such significant movement in the number of homes retrofitted each year.

That also speaks to one of the other concerns Deputy O'Rourke raised, which had regard to where we target the resource. It was important that we built the sector, that we gave it a very clear signal and that we allowed people with their own private resources to come into it as well. The industry is then built not just on Government money alone, but also on the money of people who can afford to make the transition. We are telling them to make that investment in their property, that it is a great long-term investment and that it will lower their energy bills and increase the value of their poverty. We are bringing that private money into play. That is important. I share the Deputy's concerns about equity but I do not believe Government investment alone would have been enough to unlock the industry. No one on the Government side of the House would pretend the national retrofit scheme is perfect as it is right now. There has been an awful lot of movement over the course of the lifetime of this Government, however. As with any programme of investment, it will need to be refined as we move on. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to focus on those people who are furthest behind first. The Minister of State outlined some of the progress on targeting those E-, F- and G-rated homes. A waiting time of 17 months is still far longer than I would like but it is a significant improvement over a relatively short period of time.

That is the long-term goal. That is where we want to get to. In the short term, this Government has given cash transfers. That is the simplest and quickest thing we could do. That is where the energy credits come from. There are focused energy credits through the improvements that have been made to the fuel allowance and some of those lump sums that have been paid out to people who are on social protection payments. Then there are the more generalised energy credits. Some of the criticism of those generalised energy credits is warranted. They are not targeted and they represent a significant expenditure of money. However, they make sure that those people who are not as readily identifiable through the social protection system but who absolutely need support are reached. There was a decision to be made. We could have accidentally given some money to people who may not have needed it or we could have missed out on a large cohort who are struggling to meet their energy costs.

On balance, while I might share some of the reservations that have been outlined on this previously, I think we have got that balance right. It was important that the State helped people, particularly in a time in a huge spike of energy costs. What will we do in the medium term? How can we reach people? I do not for a minute accept that it will be 200 years before they begin to feel the benefit of the energy transition. Maybe it is not in the next five years or next ten years or indeed for older people. My father turned 81 just last week and he was talking about installation of solar. He is mad to install a bit of solar but he was kind of realistic about the payback period. He was talking about putting solar up on the house and said, "Sure, maybe you will get the benefit of it in the longer term." On whether an older person should engage in a deep energy retrofit, if I am in my 80s, do I want to move out of my house while they are doing a deep retrofit? What if I am in social housing stock and do not have the wherewithal to pull the trigger on this investment myself? Is there a way that we can reach these people in the medium term that will give them some of the benefit of this energy transition?

EnergyCloud is well able to hang its own drum. It is very good at it. I get tagged in on the same posts as Deputy O'Rourke. It is worth pointing out that that is something that can be delivered in the relatively short term that really gives people who need it a benefit of this energy transition. There are other things that we can do in this space. One of the initiatives of the Greens in Austria has been around energy-efficient white goods for people in lower-income homes. That is to say, if people are replacing their washing machine, the type of thing for which there are already grants in the social welfare system, instead of getting the poorly energy rated one, they get the better energy rated one. That gives somebody a dividend from this energy transition. I think that is important.

We were speaking about the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and the interpretation of smart meter data. That is something that can be done that has all sorts of benefits. If we take people in a household that is suffering from energy poverty, make common-sense recommendations to them about the energy plan that they are availing of that will save them money, and we make recommendations to them about shifting their usage of energy, that has wider implications not just for the person living in that household but how we integrate renewables onto the grid. This is good, common sense for many people. We have to look at this. The short-term intervention in the form of cash transfer will stay there in the form of the fuel allowance. We need to look at how we treat fuel allowance in the future. The longer-term vision is to get everybody into those energy efficient, retrofitted, healthier, warmer, cheaper homes with a dividend for the environment. Are there things we can do in the medium term? Are there common-sense interventions that we can use to reach people who are furthest behind and say that this energy transition is not just for the wealthy but is something that benefits them, their community and the wider environment? That is something we really need to work on.

Regarding the criticism of carbon tax, let us be truthful that any tax on consumption can be criticised for being regressive because it will have a greater impact on those people with lower levels of disposable income. There is another way of reading the carbon tax, which is to say that the top decile use approximately eight times more carbon than the bottom decile. People who are on the highest incomes will pay, roughly speaking, eight times the amount of carbon tax. The usage is critical. The criticism that I would accept from Deputy O'Rourke is about the 40% of the ring-fenced money from the raising of the carbon tax. There is the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. I am also a member of the Committee of Public Accounts. If we are saying to people that there is a price signal around the use of carbon, which I believe there needs to be, we have to be sure that it is being spent in a way that reaches the people who most need this help and that the people furthest behind are the ones who are being reached more.

I think this has been a useful debate. Deputy O'Rourke mentioned that Deputies Ó Laoghaire and Paul Donnelly from Sinn Féin sit on the committee. It is a collegiate and cross-party committee. The chairmanship of Deputy Naughten is critical in that too. We were trying to do good with this report. There was no grandstanding or showboating. The members of the committee really worked well together to formulate what I think are good quality recommendations. I hope the Minister of State will be able to bring this back to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to say there are recommendations that can be actioned in the short, medium and long term to make sure that more of our people begin to live in that energy future that is critical both for the well-being of our people and the well-being of our planet, and that we can really begin to unlock a triple benefit whereby we benefit people and our economy locally and nationally, and we would have a positive impact in the wider world too. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the time to have this debate this evening. I really hope this is not a report set to sit on a shelf but that some of the recommendations can be actioned.

I thank Deputies Ó Cathasaigh and O'Rourke for their contributions. It is important to reflect on Deputy O'Rourke's comments. The retrofit plan is ambitious. We have a serious ambition here. It is also realistic. I absolutely agree with Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. We are not signing up to 220 years but we have been building capacity. In my opening remarks, I referred to the extra companies that are involved. The four of us know that our local ETBs are investing considerably in local apprenticeships and training in this space. As we feed the demand, the demand has to be met by skills and those skills will have to be provided. To reiterate, there will be an €8 billion investment between now and 2030, with some €527 million this year. Last year, 2,250 homes benefited from the local authority energy efficiency scheme.

One of the recommendations of the report that has been actioned on a pilot basis was that local authority and privately owned homes in the same estate or same area would be done through clustering. That makes complete sense. It is mad that you have to recommend it in an Oireachtas committee report, but welcome to this country. That is starting, with a pilot project under way in Fingal. That will feed a lot of work and certainly reach the targets an awful lot quicker. There are also recommendations in the report around the challenges with the private rental sector. That has been found right across the world. We are working under the retrofit plan to encourage landlords to invest in upgrading their properties, which includes access to the home energy upgrade loan scheme and dedicated tax incentives for small landlords to undertake retrofitting works while the tenant is in situ.

I am delighted that an energy poverty action plan is currently being prepared which followed a public consultation process earlier this year. That revised plan will be published later this year. I would be confident enough that it will capture many of the recommendations of this report. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing time for this to be discussed this evening.

I thank the Minister of State and I thank all three Deputies for contributing. As someone who, at the Business Committee, has to manage competing demands for additional time to talk on important matters, I have to say it is profoundly disappointing to come in here tonight to have a topic of enormous importance before us and, apart from Deputy Ó Cathasaigh as Leas-Chathaoirleach and the Minister of State, we have only one other Deputy present. We could do with looking into our own hearts to see how well we are fulfilling our remit as far as energy poverty is concerned. C'est la vie.