Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms O'Neill and I wish her well in her important position which will be the challenge of delivering renewable energy and energy efficiency. I compliment SEAI for its work. In particular in recent years I have become aware of its projects which encourage innovation in industry to achieve energy efficiency. The results are the exciting stories. People and communities are working with SEAI and getting results in energy efficiency as well as a lowering of costs and removing their reliance on traditional energy sources. I would like to see a widespread take-up of grants for energy efficiency in households. I refer to the 100% grants for people on certain social welfare payments which I have found are not well known about, for some reason. People know about the grants which provide a contribution towards the cost but they do not seem to be aware that a full grant is available. It seems there is more work to be done in this regard. I compliment Dr. Brian Motherway and the team for being accessible and for reaching out because that is what is required. It is a case of a paradigm shift in that one must look at things differently. We have had a long reliance on traditional energy generation and all our technologies have evolved around fossil fuels. If we had started years ago perhaps we would not be in the position that we have to introduce refit tariffs, support the use of wind and support new industry in an attempt to diversify our energy dependency.

Renewable energy, the delivery of wind energy and the use of biomass, are real issues for both Deputy Fitzmaurice and myself on the ground in terms of community acceptance. I am interested to hear Ms O'Neill's comments. Some projects have not been a great success and in my view they have led to more challenges. I refer, for instance, to those midlands wind projects which were never pinned down. These are the big industrial wind farm projects. Every part of the midlands thought it was going to have a turbine. I am from the west and the aftermath of what happened in the midlands and the showmanship and the competition between two companies caused more negativity about wind energy. It is such a vast area for discussion but the conversation always seems to be piecemeal.

When wind is talked about it is often as if we were looking for 100% wind energy but that was never suggested. However, this is the conversation. The reality is that we are supporting wind as the cheapest form of renewable energy we can support. We rely on experts, on SEAI and other bodies for expertise in this area but I ask how much conversation has been carried on with people on the ground about this to persuade them to embrace it because this goes back to community acceptance. When I go to national schools and secondary schools which are raising An Taisce green flags I often think that these youngsters are perhaps being exposed more to a different way of thinking while in the broader society the same attitude or embrace is not there.

There must be a national conversation about this whole area. I am interested to hear Ms O'Neill's views on community acceptance and also the notion of how we deliver wind energy. Are we really not to expect to deliver via big industrial wind farms? We know that as technology is developed the turbines have got higher. Should we be going for smaller scale operations and introducing more micro-generation? For people who are opposed to wind or who have valid questions, visual amenity is one of the most valid arguments. The environment committee has had people objecting to offshore wind, people objecting to onshore wind, people objecting to biomass, people against fracking. I watched Ms O'Neill's presentation on the screen in my office and one of the earlier speakers referred to the recent article by Colm McCarthy. I wonder whether it is accepted that we are going to invest. It cannot just be a case of cost as the only basis. If cost is the only basis then we should remain with fossil fuels. It would be a great argument for us to begin fracking in this country. Some members represent areas which are being explored for shale gas and therefore fracking is very controversial but neither do we want nuclear. All these options bring their own challenges and it is a case of needing to have a real conversation about what is the most efficient and whether we build offshore when we can build onshore. How do we bring this into communities and make it acceptable?

From a democratic point of view and also from the point of view of social justice, we can never remove ourselves from the question of affordability for the ordinary person. I ask Ms O'Neill and the SEAI about the contradictions such as the contradictions with regard to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The SEAI and Ms O'Neill are pursuing a policy of energy efficiency and yet we see that when local authorities upgrade their housing stock they are installing oil-fired central heating with upgraded burners. People who have been given new oil-fired central heating systems cannot afford to put oil in the tank but the councils will not install back boilers or ranges. It does not make sense. It means that people are sitting in the cold and may be left with just an open fire. That is a very real situation because people are coming to my advice clinics who tell me the council has revamped their house, put in new windows but the central heating is oil-fired. They might have had an old range in the house and a back boiler but these have been taken out and they are in the cold. That seems ridiculous. I ask if Ms O'Neill would take up this issue because it is a question of how it is consistent with what SEAI is trying to achieve in the longer term. The people who are getting carbon tax slapped on them are these people who are in energy poverty.

I am always mindful that everything we do must be tempered with the reality of the burden we are putting on people. When we think of the attitude of the United States and many of the big energy guzzling countries, and also the developing countries, with regard to carbon emissions and targets and how many European countries are way ahead in this regard even compared to ourselves, some of what we do is a drop in the ocean in the case of renewable energy. It is not that we should not have sustainable plans and be prepared to co-exist with our environment because there is a price to pay if we do not.

We must be careful, however, where the responsibility in this regard is heaped. We need to ensure, in particular, that we look after vulnerable people.

In regard to the energy efficiency measures, the cost of which is being passed on to the utility companies to implement, my concern is that those companies will, in turn, pass that cost on to customers in their energy bills. If people's bills are going up, it will be difficult to get any buy-in from them. Even if a doctor is telling me that such and such is the best thing for me, if there is no buy-in from me, I will be reluctant to go along with it. It is often the case with experts, whether in respect of EirGrid and the transmission network, for example, or anything else, that they tend to speak at a level beyond where most people are at. People are being asked to embrace things that are not properly explained. There must be more dialogue and conversation. As I said, I am concerned that this cost will be loaded onto people's bills. They are already paying a public service obligation levy; now they will face an energy efficiency charge. Where does it end? Furthermore, such a charge would have an impact on the commercial side in terms of our competitiveness. I was disappointed to see we have fallen down the rankings in that regard after being told for so long that things were improving in terms of the cost of electricity for commercial and domestic customers.

On my reading of it, Mr. Colm McCarthy's argument was purely framed around the issue of costs. Of course we must be mindful of cost, as I have argued, but he was referring to gas generation and electricity generated from gas. Is there any possibility of converting Moneypoint to gas? Ms O'Neill has pointed out that gas is conventional generation, which is not what she is concerned with, but I am strongly of the view that one cannot have the conversation about sustainable energy without looking at the full picture.