Ms Marie Donnelly:

Regarding the other member states to emulate, each country is different. Each country has different resources and each has a different philosophy on what it wishes to achieve in terms of the reaction to climate change. Certainly, Denmark is an obvious country to consider. What is remarkable about Denmark is the extent of collaboration and co-operation across all the structures in society. I can offer one illustration of that. I was recently in Copenhagen and visited its new waste incinerator. It takes pride of place in the centre of Copenhagen. When we think about waste incinerators in Ireland we do not tend to think of them taking pride of place in a city or on the skyline of a city.

The incinerator in Copenhagen is the largest waste incinerator in Europe and has recently come on stream. It was designed by one of Denmark's renowned architects. The building is a little like a comma and slopes downwards. The outside has little panels and on one side there is a climbing wall. The reason it was built in that way is that it is a ski slope for the citizens of Copenhagen to use in the winter. The design was that it would be a waste incineration plant in the middle of the city that would be part of the city - it should be something that the people of the city could use and enjoy. Rather than put it in a corner and forgetting about it, the Danes are building very expensive apartment blocks beside it because the air coming out of it is so pure. However, to get it together the Danes had to get six municipalities, the equivalent of 600,000 people, to agree to send their waste to that site. Their waste volumes are reducing every year so the Danes had to be sure they would have enough to be able to feed this large incinerator. Six municipalities had to agree to collaborate to supply it. That is one illustration of the type of partnership and dialogue that is useful to take place in countries.

Another country that has done a very good job is Portugal. Like Ireland, Portugal has wind, although more sun than we have. Portugal imports most of its energy, as we do, so it is paying that money out of the country. It wishes to try to keep that money in the country and its attitude is to get the citizen involved. To take the example of solar energy, which is popular in Portugal, people can put four panels on their roof. Basically, one can go to IKEA, buy four panels, put them on the roof, use the energy and sell it to the grid. One does not need permission or a licence. One simply says to the supplier, "I am doing this". There is no grant for the panels. One buys them oneself to supply it and one gets paid for what one sells into the grid. It is as simple, clean and neat as one could possibly imagine.

One of the things the French have done, and this would be particularly relevant for Ireland, is use their agriculture. The city of Strasbourg has a gas system in place that has used natural gas up to now. The French have encouraged the development of biogas in the agricultural sector and their objective is to have 20% biogas in that system by 2030 which will come from the agricultural base around the locality.

That is an illustration of the things that are taking place in other countries in Europe that, perhaps, would be interesting for us to examine. On the Tipperary Energy Agency, we should have one in every county or every two counties or region, whatever the case might be. It is absolutely essential. The mechanics could be sorted out as to whether it is a full agency or a full-time person who can share expertise across a number of localities. I believe that if it is not local, people will not tend to go to it or trust or believe to the same extent. If there is somebody locally with whom one can think and speak it is much better. That person can draw in expertise from wherever it is required if it is not in the locality. That is definitely a priority issue.

In terms of the dialogue with communities, every possibility is required. We should use all the structures that exist. I would add the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, ICMSA, the Gaelic Athletic Association, GAA, and others. There are also the public representatives. They have a huge role to play in terms of sensitising the population just by opening people's ears and encouraging them to think, talk and find out about it, as the case may be. Not many people in Ireland think much about energy except to complain about the bill. They worry about climate change but it is so removed that they feel helpless to do anything about it. Some dialogue about practical, concrete things that allow people to take action themselves is needed. One can start the dialogue and build on that into the future.

Storage will be key. That is part of the issue. The complaint about renewable energy has always been that it is variable. We have it when the wind blows but we do not have it when it does not. That is why we need solar power in Ireland. We do not have as much wind in the summer and we need solar power to cover that gap. More than that, however, we must use all the storage possibilities we can, including flywheel, hydro, salt caverns and salt batteries.

Anything we can find we should use. One interesting thing, although this is perhaps less relevant in Ireland, is that in many of the villages in Austria, for example, one will see the big water towers one sometimes sees. These are insulated towers of hot water. Water is heated during the summertime and is then used in the wintertime for the district heating system. It is a form of storage. One must think outside the box when it comes to storage. What are the services we get from energy? We get hot water to heat our buildings. If we can store it in the summer, we can use it in the wintertime. There are many different ways in which we need to think about storage. Yes, batteries will be useful, but we need to think much more widely than that.

Regarding methane and sequestration, if we are to maintain our agricultural sector, we have no choice but to beef up the sequestration side of it. We must be able to get a better balance in the process. It is feasible and we have the opportunity to do it, but perhaps we need the structures and the policies in place to make it happen. It will not be sustainable to have high levels of methane unabated in the country, and I do not think we should jeopardise our industry by failure to take peripheral action to support it.