Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The experience of some of the willow farmers who have planted is that the market does not exist because of a lack of end users. One needs a renewable heat incentive to make it worthwhile for people to install boilers. I understand that the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment will undertake a consultation within a year even though the process has been ongoing for a while. The Department seems to be proposing that the renewable heat incentive, that it is discussing, would only be introduced for boilers with a capacity of around 500 kW. That type of boiler is higher than what it takes to supply a mushroom house. It would be more suitable for a massive hotel with a leisure centre. In normal regional towns there are not many buildings with that level of need. An average farmer with a holding of 40 or 50 acres or 20 to 30 ha who is considering planting willow they would not, on their own, have sufficient capacity to keep such a boiler maintained and fed. The Governments in the North and Britain provide funding for 100 kW boilers. Unless the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment will fund a renewable heat incentive for boilers with a capacity for 100 kW and 200 kW then the average farmer will not enter this market. Instead, those boilers will be fed through contracts with Coillte, for example, rather than with farmers. I urge the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to engage with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment to bend the proposals so that there is a certain number of those boilers. Once one gets to a 1,000 kW boiler the marginal return is better.