Mr. Paul Kenny:

Tipperary Energy Agency has been a mentor under the sustainable energy communities programme and has operated for a number of years. It is stated in the climate plan that we will encourage more communities to engage in the process. I am worried about this because many of those communities are encouraged to do things and then they hit a brick wall as they try to secure grid connections and find they are unable to export from their community centres. They are asked as volunteers to support the energy transition at a local level and to do things that I employ engineers with four years of training in engineering design to do. SEAI currently has a tender out which will involve approximately €2 million per year or more in additional supports for communities to generate local area plans and so on. That will go to consultants and it could go to us. We have more or less decided not to enter into that process. The same budget, if it was turned around and used to support local energy agencies at a county or regional level would be much more beneficial because every time a local agency does a project, it learns from it and can support other communities. We do not need this support but other counties do. Instead of paying consultants to do up a local area plan, the community can do it. There is a certain lack of understanding of what is really required to get the energy transition to move at a local level. Committee members saw this when they visited Tipperary and we would like the committee to understand what it could do to support the development of other local energy agencies across the country.