Oisín Coughlan

I think they've moved the move from only, more or less, only funding one big retrofit to having a passport where you can do it incrementally.

I think that makes sense for a lot of people because it's a large upfront cost.

But it's still very sort of get up early in the morning and apply for a grant based.

We need a much more strategic approach.

I'm old enough to remember when they came around to our houses and said in Dublin, will you switch to gas from town gas or whatever it was back in the 70s and 80s.

And it was a really organised outreach.

And we've been saying for years with the likes of Vincent de Paul and Age Action that we need community workers basically to go out to those most at risk of energy poverty before next winter and help them

make the changes and wrap around the project support for them.

Free solar panels.

Free solar panels installed for everybody.

Yes, I mean, in Friends of the Earth, we got them to do that for schools.

It's still happening, but we got them to promise that.

But it's time to do it.

I don't know exactly how you do it fairly, but more or less for the first 100,000 people, if their houses are, you know, we need to give people that independence.

A solar panel and a battery gives you a real head start, even if you have Storm AO on.

And also one I want to keep mentioning.

They're so cheap.

now, aren't they?

The only thing is you'd be bringing them over from China, which I'm not sure is environmentally the way we want to be going.

Well, I think they're cheap and effective and if it wasn't for China, they wouldn't have come down in price.