Albert Dolan presses department on contracts, fines, carbon credits

Deputy Dolan. Go raibh maith agat Cathaoirleach and thank you all for being here and thank you for the publishing of your Q1 2026 purchase orders and the information contained therein. Just one thing was as I had asked a parliamentary question of the department maybe last October specifically focusing on your financial management system, contract management system and I got a response that basically said you know your contract management system is devolved to the individual units and that's how you manage it. Essentially what I want to ask is going forward will you be making sure that for all of the tenders that get published that there would be contract award notices attached to those and also something I'm looking to see departments start doing is trying to implement a golden thread of information across the data that they publish. So essentially you know I can see who you paid money to, how much you paid them and when you paid them, but I can't tell what you paid them for based on your purchase order data. So there's no column at the end that links me back to the original contract. So if you were just to add an extra column on your purchase order report and say this is the contract under which this payment was made, at least then I'd be able to say okay well that contract has seen this number of purchase orders towards it and you know it would just for the public, for myself and for the committee, it would be very beneficial. Is that something that you would be willing to do? I really hate to do this for the very first question perhaps for the PAC but I might have to hand over the question. It's just a detail. First of all I should say more generally we of course want to be as transparent as we can with the expenditure of public money. We're very happy to do that but there may be specific complexities about the way in which we do purchases that might make that a little tricky. So I wonder could I ask my colleague Lisa if she could come in on this point. Morning, just maybe to go back to your first question around the contract management system and whilst the contracts are devolved we do have that centralized oversight from the centre and that's how we track and monitor the expenditure going forward. In terms of the release of data on the quarterly reports you have seen that it does include those over 20,000, the supplier name, the service and the invoice value. We don't at this stage publish the data that links it back to specific contracts. And just Lisa it's really important to say the reason I think that it's important is because the department might have a consultant or an advisor under multiple different contracts doing different work and so I can't tell whether they're hitting their targets or not based on the fact that they might have multiple contracts with the department or multiple departments across the state. So look I do appreciate your clarity on that and I'm conscious that the time goes very quickly so I want to move on to the next issue. Primarily this one really caught me off guard when I was looking through the accounts. You were fined, now maybe fined might not be the correct word, but 4.5 million euros in your 2024 accounts for late transposition of legislation. Can you explain to me what happened there? I can indeed Deputy. So this relates to the communications function and what did arise under the 2024 appropriation account. It relates to the emergency call answering service and Ireland under EU law is obliged to introduce such a sorry the emergency warning service I beg your pardon. Ireland is obliged under EU law to introduce such a service. It is a complex arrangement that requires procurement of some very sophisticated kit to do it. It can't just be a simple matter of you know we just get it we broadcast this on the airwaves or whatever. So this is the idea that people say if there was a flood in a particular location that you'd actually get a localised flood warning on your phone. So in Galway County right when I was a county councillor and even to this day I'm on the text alert system so if there's a tree down in a certain road or if there's a flood in an area or a road is closed in fairness the council can send out those texts and I receive them. Now I received them maybe by virtue of the fact that I was a member of the council. Oh you may have signed up to something. Or I may have signed up to a map alerter. This is one that pushes it into your phone? Yes. Okay. I receive a text but why is that not available for the wider public? So as I say Ireland is obliged to introduce this under this directive. The procurement was occurring that the people were trying to work out technically how to best to do it and they had delayed transposition of that particular provision while they were working out the technicalities but it was realised that obviously the Commission were concerned about this they said you haven't transposed one particular provision of that or indeed there was a number of provisions but ultimately ended up just being one provision wasn't transposed. So how long did they give you before they imposed the fine? What did you do to try and avoid the fine? We transposed, ultimately transposed the entire directive and a decision was made to transpose it in a kind of a bootstrap way involving text messages. That would allow for the directive to be transposed so we were no longer at fault in non-transposition of the directive and since then the work has continued. So what did you get fined for? Did you get fined for not transposing or did you get fined for transposing by bootstrap? We got fined for not transposing or delay in transposing. By the time the court decision came we had actually transposed the directive. And do you believe to this day that you're compliant with the directive? We are indeed in compliance with the directive and the complaint has been closed. The directive has been transposed. Because it's just like there has to be some accountability there for the fact that you know somebody knew this fine was coming or knew that an impact was going to come by virtue of the fact that the legislation had not been transposed. What lessons have you learned from this and how do we make sure that you aren't here again in front of us telling us you were fined for other legislation? There was a very good lesson out of this which is the perfect is the enemy of the good. So what people were trying to do was achieve a perfect result, a perfect technical result. It wasn't feasible in the time frame we had to transpose the directive. So instead a solution was arrived at which allowed us to transpose the directive and reduce the liability to the state of non-transposition and work is still continuing as I understand it on the technical aspects to bring in the system. So perfect is the enemy of the good. I couldn't agree more and one is greater than zero. I completely agree. Last week on RTE there was a really interesting piece about a man who had developed a flood warning system based on probabilities and he had done this at home in his spare time. Has your department ever considered bringing in somebody like that and saying we'd love to hear more about your idea and we'd love to see more citizen-led initiatives being brought in to the civil service? Because ultimately as you said at the start you were saying it's incredibly technical, it's incredibly complicated, you know we'll have to procure it, we'll have to tender it and all this. But what if there is somebody out there who has the good solution as opposed to the perfect one? This is the bit where unfortunately I have to ask my colleague Tom because I no longer am responsible for this issue. So I don't know if Tom if you can come in on the point. Thanks Tom. So in the Department of Culture, Sport and Communication now there is, so the public warning system is a project in terms of developing a system. Tom would you liaise with the person who had that flood based reporting system based on probabilities? I could take that back. Could you take that back because I actually think it'll be very worthwhile and I understand that you have a very complicated job to do and that you have to get it right when you are giving out warrants. So I don't want to underplay it either and say oh it's it's an easy job. It's not. But if somebody has developed something that might be able to aid you, whether you implement it or not, I always think it's important to talk to as many people as possible. I think we can do that because it is a complicated structure in terms of liaising with the stakeholders, the operators etc to be able to get that push out to the right people at the right time in the right areas. Okay can I move on to the Climate Action Fund right? Is there a lot of unspent balances in the Climate Action Fund currently? There is not a lot of unallocated balances and we are waiting for those balances to be drawn down by the projects to which it has been allocated to. So if I can just throw a few figures at you. We've taken in so far at around 523.8 million in funds into the Climate Action Fund. We've allocated 478.9 million of those. So those have been allocated specific projects and indeed I've just sent a further proposal to the Minister to allocate a further 40 million. So in fact that will bring us pretty much to full allocation of the fund. What percentage of that is drawn down? So 261 million of that has been spent. And what do you think is the main thing holding back the other 200 million from being drawn down? It tends to be maturity of the projects in essence. So where we can send it into something like the SEAI and they're good at pumping out money into say public sector, retrofit or whatever, we have no problem spending the money. We have no problem spending the money for example by giving to the Department of Education and allowing them to put solar panels on schools. And half the schools in the country have solar panels on it, the other half will be funded out of the Climate Action Fund. So really efficient effective way of putting money in where it's needed. Other projects are much slower and part of that in part is because the Climate Action Fund is intended in part to fund novel types of projects that we haven't previously done here in Ireland. A good example would be district heating. So we have a number of commitments under the Climate Action Fund to fund district heating. One of them is five million to fund and start up to get people to prepare for a district heating project. Do you know the 200 million that isn't drawn down yet? Have you a timeline on that? Do you know the way the Commission find ye? Are you going to decommit funding if people don't draw it down and get it spent? Ultimately we may have to put proposals to the Ministry to decommit funding. If we think a particular proposal just isn't going to get to the mark we will probably have to decommit funding and recommit it elsewhere because there are demands everywhere. It's just because this is something that's so important right across the country. For people to see the benefits of the Climate Fund and to see the benefits of climate transition in our communities in terms of for schools and community centres and GA clubs lowering their costs. It's a win-win and the climate is benefiting and I think that's the message that has to go out there. The Climate Action Fund can be incredibly positive but it has to get out there. I suppose that there's a certain reluctance on our part because some of the projects that I feel like have been slower up to the mark are the ones that are real leaders in developing a particular system. So district heating would be a great example. We've got 50 million set aside in the fund for a Dublin district heating scheme. We're working very hard with Dublin to try and get that scheme which would be an absolute, would be a leader in Ireland for district heating and we're the worst in Europe for renewable heating and so we do need to develop this structure here in Ireland. Thank you. Right, the next question is primarily around the Carbon Fund and carbon credits. What is a carbon credit? That's an extremely good question. Essentially it's where a project is done that is say by planting trees or something like that which has an attributed carbon value to it so that it captures a greenhouse, a level of greenhouse gas and a price is put upon that and that can be bought and sold in various markets or it can be done in terms of what are called AEAs across Europe. So the Department of Energy and Climate buys carbon credits, is that correct? We have bought carbon credits, yes. We bought it internationally in the past when that was permissible. Can I ask how much roughly have you bought historically? So historically, let me just make sure I have my figures out here in front of me. The purchases from the Carbon Fund totalled 118 million euros and most of them have actually been utilised to meet commitments that Ireland had. And we have further spent 2.9 million a few years ago on ANAs and I think we spent a further 50 million or so in further purchase of carbon credits within Europe in more recent times. So if my understanding is correct, purchasing a carbon credit means that you're purchasing someone else's obligation to store carbon? You're purchasing somebody else's actual storage of carbon. Actual storage? Yes. So here's the question, what assurance do you have that the carbon is actually being stored and that the projects are actually delivering? Because I know there's significant international concerns about, you know, double counting of carbon credits, multiple projects being committed probably to multiple different countries. How do you not get led down the garden path? Because when we come in here and we look at your accounts, we have a certain level of assurance and trust in them because of the work done by the CNAG. How do you have assurance that when you buy carbon credits you're not just buying a piece of paper? So Europe is currently not permitted to buy international carbon credits, so we can only buy carbon credits within the European Union at present to meet our carbon targets. So that's how we offer assurance because obviously we can rely on the systems in place in other EU member states to make sure that the carbon credits are there and they're necessarily audited and so on and so forth. The reason we ended up with the... So when you go out to buy them though, are you buying them off of individual projects or are you buying them off of funds that are selling carbon credits? In the early days we were investing in funds and in present terms we would be buying off individual projects. I know Brian, do you have anything you can add? Or Barry, anything you can add on the recent purchase of the carbon credits from... Yeah, we bought them directly from other member states. So where member states had overachieved in terms of their own carbon targets, they were allowed to sell or trade that overachievement. So it would have been directly from other EU member states. But within the EU legal framework, which is quite stringent in terms of the due diligence, you were concerned about how do you know they're real? So the EU has fairly strict apparatus around that. I have another concern really, is like carbon credits, they just they seem like a bit of a scam. And I don't want to be crude, but they seem like a scam because would we not be better off spending the money on actual projects on our own island here that can store carbon or can better improve the environment? As opposed to trying to buy pieces of paper to say, oh we're the best child in the class. We are spending our money as fast as we can to do just that, Deputy. So like we have an enormous amount of capital money to spend in Ireland this year and across our NDP for the next five years. And the aim is to make sure that we're taking as much climate action as we can at home. Because Ireland has obligations under EU law to meet certain targets and we need to be able to to meet them across a range of sectors, whether it's agriculture, transport, heating in homes and businesses and so forth. And to do that we're investing money as quickly as we can.