I want to make the point that it was a very successful year, partly because it was very windy and because solar is now coming onstream. This is only the first year it is coming onstream. Approximately 100 households are having solar panels put on their roofs each day. We are putting them on every school. We have 600 MW of solar in fields and 400 MW on rooftops. This is not stopping; if anything, it is accelerating. It will increase. We have a further 2 GW of solar in the field which has already been through the auc…

I remember it was longer ago, 14 or 15 years ago, when the likes of Wavebob and OpenHydro, really good Irish companies, were deploying in the seas. It is something we massively supported in our previous time in government, along with Deputy Ó Cuív and others. We are continuing this. The SEAI is developing a marine energy test site west of Belmullet, which will go out to the Atlantic to seek carry out further testing in a harsher environment than that found in Galway Bay. We see this as having potential. We have to …

Solar energy is a growing source of electricity and is rapidly transforming Ireland's energy system, with more than 1 GW of solar generation now in place. This includes more than 400 MW of rooftop solar and nearly 600 MW of grid-scale solar connected. The renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, has driven significant investment in solar energy in Ireland and has led to a major acceleration in the delivery of solar power to the grid over the past 24 months. RESS has more than 2 GW of solar projects contracted an…

I am confident we can do it. Solar will play a large part. I will give Deputy Burke some further figures to back this up. In 2022, there were 10,000 applications. We had only just introduced the microgeneration support scheme, which cost €24 million and had a capacity of 46 MW. Last year 22,000 homes received grant support, with a total value of €52 million. Applications are flying and the number is increasing all the time. I am told the industry is increasing the build-up of its capacity and the supply chain is wo…

It is a real challenge. It is a massive investment and a huge change. It is backed up. The key issues include the grid – EirGrid has 350 projects and the ESB has project pipeline of about €10 billion set out - and they are delivering that. They need to do it faster, but that is part of it. The other key constraint or bottleneck potentially is in planning. We have had a real difficulty in the last three years where there were various difficulties in our planning system, which people know about. It was very hard to g…

Through the first two RESS auctions, my Department provided pathways and supports for communities to participate in renewable energy projects through the application of a community projects category. However, in the future, support for communities for the development of renewable projects will now transition to the small-scale renewable electricity support scheme, SRESS. The SRESS will not be auction-based, rather it is anticipated that support for export projects would be through an export tariff. The export tarif…

As it happens, I had a meeting yesterday with a variety of community energy organisations. The first subject we discussed at the meeting was the fact that there is a recognition that it has not built up at anywhere near the scale, speed and diversity that we want. We will have to continue to make sure that it does and start to revise whatever programmes we have in place. My understanding is that possibly three or four of the projects that were among the first to go through the RESS will be energised but they have h…

Part of the work the SEAI is doing is providing exactly that sort of information, so I will send to the Deputy some of the material it has presented.

The SEAI is an agency of our Department and it is best placed. It runs the sustainable energy community scheme. We had a very good meeting yesterday, as I said, and that immediate connection between the community developers and the SEAI is important. It has presented a lot of practical and easy-to-digest information. That to my mind is a key part of how we make this work. The new renewable scheme will be available within the coming weeks, in a short number of weeks, and it will be significant because it will provid…

-----and innovative flexibility in respect of how we use the existing grid. In many cases, the real cost and impediment to developing community energy is the cost of the transformer in the station and building up the capacity of the grid to be able to take it. The ESB is taking a new innovative approach-----

-----whereby it is looking at how to use flexibility within the grid and examining hybrid connections and other such measures. That approach, along with the shared renewable energy systems, SRES, could be a game-changer to allow community energy to flourish.

The kettle is calling the pot black. We were only there a moment ago.

An Post is a commercial State body with a mandate to act commercially. An Post has statutory responsibility for the State's postal service and the post office network. The Government is committed to a sustainable future for An Post and the post office network as they provide a key component of the economic and social infrastructure throughout Ireland. The Government recognises the importance of the high-value and high-quality post office network to our citizens throughout the country as well as the central and trus…

I absolutely agree with the Deputy. The fundamental strength of An Post is that it is trusted throughout the country, especially through the network. Local postmasters have for generations served their local communities. That trust is enormously beneficial. It is also an organisation which is able and efficient at handling millions of transactions every week. Those include financial transactions and other important business. The Deputy's suggestion is a good one. Where a community does not have a branch of a local …

The issue of the television licence will be considered by Government in the wider context. Last year, €131,884,000 was raised through the television licence. It is really important we maintain that. It is very important for public service broadcasting that people pay the licence fee and we support journalism at a time of disinformation and fake news. An Post is the net beneficiary of 7% of the licence fee with regard to collection, with €1.9 million per year going to postmasters. A decision has not been made regard…

I know Deputy Ó Murchú has been in regular contact with me and my officials on this issue, which I know has been a real issue for the residents of Carlinn Hall, which I launched 15 years ago so I am familiar with the housing estate referred to by the Deputy. The district heating steering group, DHSG, report, which was approved by Government in July 2023 contains a range of recommendations setting the future policy direction for the development of district heating. As part of its work, the DHSG asked the SEAI to car…

The appropriate organisation in respect of such engagement would be the SEAI, which helped commission the original report. We have the advantage here that there is a detailed feasibility study that could give us lessons for other national applications with recommendations, so I see no reason the residents could not take the route of engaging with the SEAI to see what the best next steps are.

By all means.

I join my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, in very much welcoming the historic decision to proceed with the nature restoration law in Europe. It is desperately needed because our natural systems are in absolute distress. They are under great pressure. In the past 50 years we have lost half of all wildlife in the natural world by invertebrate body mass weight. This is not just the headline fauna and the animals that attract all the interest, but it is in insect life, bird life and everywhere. Through…

The timelines are roughly similar. To go back to what the Minister of State said, this review of land is not to tell an individual farmer or forester this is what they must do or else. It is to try to get an assessment of what is happening and to try to make sure we align our incentives with rural development, the future of farming and the protection of the natural world and system. The scale of change is not small. We made a great change in this country in going from only 1% or 2% forestry cover at the foundation …