Ms Kate Ruddock:

I will be very brief. I wish to note the timing and remind everyone present of fairness and the potential for public outrage if we delay and wait until the EU forces us to bring in microgeneration and the sale of microgenerated energy. There has been some discussion of the renewal electricity support scheme, which is very good. I strongly welcome the scheme but I agree that it should be implemented faster and that the Department needs many more staff. I am concerned that we would have the renewable electricity support scheme but nobody in the public arena will know the names of the different subsidy schemes. There may be professional onshore wind developers getting a subsidy and people will see that smaller microgenerators and community projects are not receiving the same level of subsidy, or they may not even be entitled to get it. The Department is trying to bring forward a community-led project in the first auction but the smaller generators are not included in the first auction. They are for down the line in the future. There are shovel-ready community owned projects ready to go. If we could arrange the timing in such a way that people could see they are able to participate in this transition, this will progress much faster and in a much fairer way. The Minister has spoken a great deal about needing to bring people with us on the climate change challenge that we have to overcome. Taking these small steps at this time would be very valuable.