Energy Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

I will keep the Deputy informed of the progress. We are trying to make it easier to deploy renewables. That is why the critical infrastructure legislation on bigger projects will be really important. There are things that households and communities can do. We have seen the growth, with 33,000 solar grant applications granted last year. We will accelerate that further this year, with about 73,000 retrofits. Plug-in solar is not an extremely new technology but there might have been some concerns with it. However, it is not being dismissed. I can assure the Deputy of that. We have a more detailed response on it in the written parliamentary question the Deputy has submitted. I will keep him directly informed on it. I made changes to the SEAI grants at the start of March in terms of making things more accessible for people to support. We have seen a really significant increase in applications for things like heat pumps, solar, wall cavity insulation and attic insulation as we have made it easier for people to do so. We also have to look at solar storage and battery storage in homes and at utilising our car batteries through EV and solar. I will come back to the Deputy.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16