Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central We have our fair share of them - I will acknowledge that - but they are important catalysts for investment too. The point is, though, that they will use up a lot of energy so we really need the offshore wind to happen. That has faced challenges because of what has happened in the United States and the undermining of the companies in the US in the wind space. We have quite a number of offshore wind projects in planning at the moment. We need to get those over the line by 2030 onwards and get a number of offshore wind farms up and running. That is key to the future energy sustainability of the country. There are about 2.5 GW of onshore wind in planning at the moment, with An Coimisiún Pleanála. That gives an illustration of where we are in terms of the energy debate. We had a debate earlier about TAMS. Farmers are very positive about the utilisation of solar on rooftops, farm sheds and so on. That is an area we can unlock and do more on. Deputy Cummins also made a point about retrofitting. We have been working on that. About €500 million is being spent on retrofitting now but there is validity in the Deputy's point insofar as it is still a significant up-front cost for people to do deep retrofitting, notwithstanding the significant grants that are now available. However, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, changed the grant scheme last February for windows and doors and a whole range of other items. He brought down the thresholds and has made it easier. The result has been a quite dramatic upsurge in applications, in terms of the numbers of people now applying for different types of retrofitting and for windows and doors as well, so that is working. Is innealtóir den scoth é Barry Heneghan gan amhras. Admhaím go bhfuil suim faoi leith aige i gcúrsaí fuinnimh. Tagann sé isteach anseo go minic le moltaí agus tá an Rialtas ag éisteacht leis, particularly in the context of the legislation pertaining to private wires. I discussed plug-in solar with the Minister, arising from the Deputy raising it the last day. There are issues with the capacity of houses to absorb plug-in solar. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19