Mr. Michael Manley:

There is some misunderstanding here. Most of what the witnesses from Friends of the Earth and Tipperary Energy Agency have said is a cause of no great dispute. There is no good argument against it. The theme I was trying to deliver on this note is that the Minister has made plain, and the Department is obviously ad idem, that there is a shared ambition to increase community, citizen and microgeneration on the system. We think it is a very important part of the future and that people must have that ownership of it.

There are two aspects regarding the impact of it. Electricity is in the emissions trading scheme, ETS, sector. Our focus is often on our targets in the non-ETS sector. Where we make changes in the electricity system, they do not tend to benefit hugely in terms of meeting our non-ETS targets, which are very much focused around transport, heating and agriculture. A target of 5% in a sector that is a small part of total carbon emissions is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on our carbon targets. That was the point I was making. I apologise if I made it clumsily but that was the message that was very much there.

We are strongly of the view that citizens must be part of the future. This is a theme coming from Europe, but it has also been embraced in Ireland for some considerable time. Meetings on the Green Paper were held throughout 2014 and 2015. There was consultation on the renewable electricity support, RES, scheme. We published, probably for the first time by any Department, a very detailed economic analysis and a community analysis of the RES scheme. I do not think anybody has ever published that kind of detailed granular data before - right down to different technologies.

Mr. Gannon reflected on schools. There is a real challenge in the alignment. Schools' peak demand is in November, December and January while peak solar is in June, July and August. There is a real mismatch in how that is handled. There will also be commercial generators, some small and some large. The question arises as to how we manage the market mix. We must transpose the vast majority of the clean energy package and the directives in there by 2021. We must put communities at the centre of the market. Looking at the Bill, our question is whether it is the best and most cost-effective way of doing this.

Regarding the grid, it is not so much about the level of demand. It looks as if we are going to see growth in energy. In particular, if we electrify heat and transport, this will drive its own piece. It is how we share it. If I choose to put in solar and biomass and use very little of the grid, I will need it periodically and will only pay a contribution to the grid for the bit I need, but I will benefit from it all the time, so how do we manage that? How do we design a pricing scheme that is fair to all of us, not just those who might live in areas where they cannot afford to be involved? I hope that covers the points that were made.