Mr. Joe O'Carroll:

I am grateful for the invitation to attend. RECAP stands for the Renewable Energy Consumers and Producers, which was formed towards the end of last year essentially to act as a coherent contact point for the Department and other State bodies in discussing the acceleration of climate action, particularly in the area of energy. Unfortunately, one of our members, Mr. Brian Britton, passed away last week. I wish to put on record our thanks to him for the phenomenal energy he put into establishing RECAP. He was one of few people who could pull together all strands of the industry.

RECAP members cover energy generation from all different renewable energy technologies. We also include consumer groups. This is in recognition that many of the foreign direct investment companies in Ireland have already signed up to the RE100, which is a commitment to source 100% of their energy from renewable sources. We are seeing a strong demand from consumers as well as, obviously, people active in the industry.

Since RECAP was formed we have made submissions to the RESS consultation, the enduring connections policy and the National Planning Framework. We continue to work proactively with a wide range of stakeholders. Our ultimate belief is that we need to work towards a 100% renewable energy target. It is only when we accept that this is the long-term goal that we will start to make all policy decisions and regulatory regime changes with a long-term goal in mind.

Over recent months we have seen a number of very positive announcements, including the climate emergency measures Bill, the commitment to the SSRH, the ending of grant aid for oil boilers etc. We are starting to see an acceleration of very welcome activity. We will need all these actions and more. It has taken us 30 years to get to about 10% renewable energy. We need to treble that over the next 12 years if we are to keep in line with our Paris commitments. It seems like a tall order, but we have the fastest growth rates for biomass. We have the second best wind resource in the EU, which will be the highest post-Brexit. We have solar radiation levels similar to much of Europe. We have a very skilled industry here capable of meeting those targets and making the necessary investments.

We see this as an opportunity rather than a compliance issue. I will give just one statistic. Over the course of the last year we imported €9.6 billion of energy products, €4 billion of which came from the UK, mostly in the form of oil and gas. To put that into context, it is about the same value of all of our food and drink exports to the UK. That gives an indication of the scale of activity.