Mr. Simon Woodworth:

The health information systems research centre in the College of Business and Law, of which I am part, has established a relationship with the Irish charity Solar Without Frontiers. It is not the only charity involved in this area; there are several others. In terms of the reason we have done this, in March I returned from Malawi where I visited a rural clinic at a time when all of the patients were attending. We spoke to one of the doctors who was reticent about talking in his office, but he came to chat to us later. We asked him what he needed the most and he replied "energy." They are too far away from the grid infrastructure for it to be economical to build a link. It must be borne in mind that many sub-Saharan countries are close to the Equator where twilight is very short and for half of every day there is no daylight. It is not like in Ireland where we have long summer evenings and one can make use of the sunlight.