Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have one question for Mr. Stewart which I would like to put before he comes in. What he said about digital revolution and so on is true. A model which has been shown to work very well on the community aggregated supply and generation side is that of a Belgian company, Ecopower, based in Flanders. The attractive aspect of this model is that it aggregates. Individual shares can be as little as €250 and allow people to put in the outputs of larger microgeneration or even other generation assets. It also acts as a supply company providing the kind of innovative demand management services about which Dr. Sunderland has just talked - switching things on and off and so on. I agree with him that this aggregated community co-operative model seems to have significant potential to ramp things up at scale, because it is hard for any individual household to engage in this. I am familiar with, and hugely supportive of, the work Mr. Stewart is doing on the smart grid in Tallaght. Why have we not seen any such co-operatives, which are suppliers and generation aggregators, develop to date? What has been the obstacle to replicating what works in Belgium here? Mr. Stewart has been involved in this. What has blocked its real-world application in Ireland?