Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

No, Minister. What is coming across is that it is very aspiration for the Minister to include remarks such as: "embracing new technologies for communities, and smaller microgeneration, but on the other hand that is not the evidence of what is done. Less than a year ago, I tabled an amendment to the Minister's Bill to allow small communities access to the national grid and he argued vociferously and hard against it. The majority voted against it. Yet in his response to my question he outlines the facilitation of grid access for community-led projects; ring-fencing of capacity for community-led projects; and the establishment of community benefits register. He does not respond by actually doing things that will give the community the idea that the Department is interested in its needs. For example, the Minister voted against the recent Sinn Féin Bill on the regulation of turbines. What that Bill was attempting to do, in my view, was to give communities reassurance that they were not going to be imposed upon by ginormous wind farms up against their homes and their farms and that there would be some kind of tight regulation on how the major commercial interests in the energy field would be regulated and controlled. The communities are not getting the reassurance at all, except in the very nice language used in written answers. Nothing is being done in fact to reassure communities that the Minister is interested in them having a role and buy-in to renewable energy in this country. I think unless we get that buy-in, understanding and support and trust between Government policy and local communities we will not do anything except facilitate commercial renewable energy technologies.

There were interesting reports in the media about farmers in County Offaly having to block Element Power from continuing to construct these ginormous 169 m high turbines near their land. I do not think the Minister would like to live beside these turbines and neither would I, and when local people object to them, they are being called NIMBYists who are stopping progress. On the other side, if other local communities try to buy in to producing their own energy and gain access to the national grid, that is also being blocked by the Minister.

I therefore see his policy as full of holes and contradictions.

I would like the Minister to spell out to us how the new renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, will help local communities buy into renewables because that is absolutely the future. Perhaps sometime we could invite someone from the energy department in Germany, where they are doing this correctly, regulating it correctly and having a huge level of success, to tell us a few things about how we could do things differently in Ireland. We are blessed on this island as far as nature is concerned with the amount of access to natural renewable energy we have. Compared to a country such as Germany, we should be way ahead instead of way behind.