Mr. John Melvin:

To my knowledge, there is no renewable energy feed-in tariff, REFIT, type scheme or Government-mandated subsidy for microgeneration in the system. While there is a REFIT 3 scheme, which is a subsidy for the kilowatt hours produced for the larger wind farms there is no such scheme for larger solar farms. There is no difference in cost because there is no subsidy for microgeneration. There is, however, a capital grant for microgeneration available from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. One aspect of microgeneration that is important and sometimes neglected is that if one consumes the energy from microgeneration in one's home, there are no transmission losses. If energy from a solar farm in Wexford has to be transmitted to where other people live, there are losses as it is transferred across the country. One of the benefits of microgeneration is that it is generated on a roof and used in a house and the householder can vary the demand in the house for the times when it is generated. There is no subsidy.