Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his presentation. I welcome the electricity credit under this provision. According to my sums, a total of 2,059,000 homes will benefit from this €450 credit. It will be very welcome over the winter months when the high cost of energy will continue to be a real problem in terms of the cost of living of ordinary families. I welcome this measure and I am very pleased to see the provision being made in a timely manner.

I also welcome the move to put microgeneration on a more substantial footing. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister of State what is the new capacity he expects to be built by the non-domestic sector under this grant scheme. A sum of €12 million is being set aside, so it sounds like it could be approximately 5 MW of power generated. It does not sound like it is a huge number, but I will be interested to see the scope in this regard. I say this because it certainly seems to me that, at a time when many businesses are coming under pressure and there is a significant need for transformative change, this is an area where there could be significant cost savings realised for the running of those businesses that seize the opportunity. How ambitious is this undertaking? Has the capacity of the small-and-medium-sized sector to take this up been assessed?

We recently had representatives from Enterprise Ireland, the SEAI, Skillnet Ireland and the local enterprise offices, LEOs, in with the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. What was staggering was the very low take-up by enterprise of the various schemes to undertake a green transformation. The take-up rate of these opportunities was running at about 1% of businesses. This suggested to me, and this was confirmed by spokespersons for the SEAI, that very often cost-saving measures, which do not cost businesses anything, are being missed because of the very low take-up in this regard.

It brings to my mind the problem we have not just in this area but also with the circular economy and many of the other transformative changes we are trying to deliver. The Minister of State is working with might and main, it should be said, to try to introduce strategies for transformative change, but there is a big swathe of businesses to which this message is not getting through and for which the take-up of these measures is very low. We need to think differently about how we are going to approach this context. I commend the Minister of State on the schemes. I also commend Enterprise Ireland on its green audits and so on. There is lots of stuff out there. We need, however, to find a way of bouncing more enterprises into taking on this challenge.

The Minister of State, with his Government colleagues, ought to confront the fact that undertaking this transformative change in a timely manner will actually make our enterprises more competitive. We need to find a way cross-government to mobilise and build momentum for this change.

This is an excellent example but we need to create greater expectation within the sectors. I previously advocated - the Minister of State would probably be tired of listening to it - that we should have sectoral compacts that look at the transformative change, particularly built around the circular economy, and that we should integrate the circular economy into the climate action plan with the same level of scrutiny and monitoring from the Taoiseach’s office that has been a significant element of climate change planning and execution.

I ask about some of the sources of savings. One area is the just transition fund. We need to see the legislation for a just transition commission come forward. It would be good to hear where that currently stands. There is a genuine need to have the principles of what just transition is going to be all about because we are trying to mobilise change in a deep way. I was just talking to Deputy Kenny before the Minister of State came in about the challenges for farming to undertake that. We do not really have the line of sight on what a prosperous farm will look like in ten years’ time. If we do not have that, it will be hard to mobilise change. We need to bring not just the Bill itself but also the principles.

Savings are being made on waste management at the same time as the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, reported during the week that two thirds of what goes into municipal waste should not be there at all. We have a problem in waste management. Again, rapid change will be necessary. Many of our established practices are not matching that and it comes back to the same issue of how to mobilise change.

I see savings are to be made on the loan scheme. That triggers a question as to when we will actually see the loan scheme up and running, which is key to leveraging the one-stop shops. As far as I remember, there are 20 one-stop shop operators in place now. To make the funding circle complete, we need this loan. I am interested to know what the interest rate is likely to be. Clearly, it has to be pretty low in order to deliver.

The other area is the national broadband plan. I wish to say - I heard the Minister of State say this - that, at the time, there was much scepticism that this was the right thing to do. I note the Department did a benefit-to-cost ratio and the benefit now estimated is double what was estimated at the time we made the decision, which I think vindicates that decision. Many such courageous decisions are resisted in many quarters. It is heartening to see this. We made a decision about future-proofing our economy and stuck our neck out and, in this case, we have been vindicated. We need this sort of infrastructure for the long-term success of the rural economy, particularly, and to make remote working, remote delivery of service and vibrant towns and villages. It is impossible to conceive of a successful rural life that does not have high-quality broadband. This has been vindicated by Covid and the uptake that we have seen since.