Mr. Gary Connolly:

To get to 6 GW we are talking about a blend of the utility scale projects and we are probably talking about 4.5 GW to 5 GW of utility scale solar power. I can talk through what that looks like in a minute. The remainder would be customer scale solar power, which is essentially solar panels on rooftops across the country. We have work under way with MaREI, the research centre in University College Cork, to look at what the potential resources in Ireland are. It is working to look at all the home rooftops in the country and how much they could generate. Panels do not need to be put on a big percentage of buildings, including: schools; universities; various industrial and commercial settings; and homes across the country, before one starts getting to quite big numbers quickly.

On the utility scale, the Minister mentioned the RESS auctions. Dr. Reale mentioned these auctions and in them the renewable projects compete to be guaranteed a price for 15 years. If one models that forward in terms of the four that have been announced and if one assumes that solar will do anything like what it did in the first auction in terms of wind rate, a variety of scenarios will be run such as projects falling over and not being able to make it stack up at the end even after the auction. One still gets to scenarios where one is easily at 4,000 to 5,000 based on what has been published by the Government on the programme of RESS auctions. Even with a relatively conservative set of assumptions one can get there. The key is that if all that solar power is layered in with all that wind power the number of hours in the day when we are generating clean power will be increased. There is another benefit to all these projects under the RESS auctions. The way the contract works is that if it is below a certain price the projects get topped up from the public service obligation, PSO, levy on customers' bills but if it is above that then the projects pay back. The last RESS auction is €73 per MW hour. Around now it is about €250 per MW hour in that market. If we had built those projects faster than we have they would all be paying back €180 per MW hour right now.