An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-11
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Malcolm Noonan (GP), Agricultural Panel

I have two issues I want to raise. We have had a lot of discussion on modern methods of construction. We have potential in Ireland to grow a crop here that could be used in many applications through paper and packaging, construction and building materials, agriculture, gardening, bioplastics and composites, health and nutrition and environmental and industry applications, and that is industrial hemp. There does not appear to be any interest in the Department of agriculture or in government more generally about this absolute wonder crop that could be grown at scale in Ireland. A number of farmers are growing it in trial crops, and there have been certain attempts through Teagasc in Oak Park to grow it. I really think the Government should be giving active consideration to the growing of industrial hemp at scale in Ireland. It has huge potential for embodied carbon but also from environmental growing of the crop. I would welcome an opportunity to have a debate with the Minister for agriculture about this.
There were calls in the Chamber last night to have the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment in with us. I ask that there would be a specific debate on energy poverty. We have statistics from EnergyCloud this week. In the 314 days since the programme for Government was enacted, 1,169 GWh of renewable energy has been wasted in this country through what it calls dispatch down. The approximate retail value of this is €414 million, equivalent to 390 million tanks of hot water that could be deployed to low-income households. This is a scandal. All it requires is the Minister to make a political commitment that the Government would look at this dispatch-down energy and work with EnergyCloud. EnergyCloud does really wonderful work with energy retailers at pilot scale in bringing dispatch-down energy to households, but it could be done at a much larger scale given that 380,000 households up to November 2025 were in energy arrears, and approximately 410,000 households are receiving the fuel allowance. This energy could be used but it is being wasted. We need a debate on energy poverty in this House. I would welcome the opportunity for the Minister to be invited in to do so.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:37+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-11