Mr. Conall Bolger:

I will respond to the questions in reverse order, if that is okay.

As for on-the-rooftop solar panels and the exclusion of airports, we are not convinced that it is that serious a concern. My colleague, Dr. Reale, highlighted Belfast International Airport, where you can see the panels from the planes when coming in. Rotterdam The Hague Airport has just opened a 14 MW solar farm just by its runway. Dublin Airport has just applied for planning permission for its own solar farm, so I am not sure how concerned it is about glint and glare in all that. We think the approach is probably too conservative and does not reflect the good practice we have seen in other jurisdictions. If the wind energy industry talks about planning as issue number one and grid as issue number two, we reverse the order - grid is issue number one for us and planning is issue number two.

We share concerns about the resourcing of the planning process. In the mid-2010s, Ireland lost many planning experts as a result of the economic crash and the economic challenges it created. To date, solar has been quite successful in the planning process. The last statistics I saw showed that about 93% of planning applications for ground-mounted systems had been successful. We want to update a set of planning guidelines that we developed in 2016 and 2017. They were designed for planners with a view to showing what good development looks like and the good practices to ask for. We hope to update those guidelines this year, probably this year going into next year, with the intent that the update reflects the issues planners face.

The fundamental issue is resourcing. We are hopeful that if we provide them with some information, or with a resource on which they can draw, it will enable them to assess these applications a bit more.

Beyond resourcing, there is also the planning process and the delivery by local authorities. Once these projects come out of planning, are financed and building has started, we start getting into issues such as road opening licences, as well as various other implementation challenges. The local authorities are burdened with a lot. They could probably do with some help in resourcing those processes.

I could probably talk for two days about what is needed for the network. I will not labour that. It is key that we get our plan right. Our plan for rolling out the network is wrong. It is out of date. It is not consistent with Government policy. When I talk about that plan, I am talking about a document called Shaping Our Electricity Future, which was produced by EirGrid during the recent climate conference on the path to 70% clean energy. First, it did not capture the 80% renewable electricity target in the climate action plan. Since then, we have seen analyses from a number of sources that suggest that it is not consistent with any sort of pathway on our carbon budgets. I think they have been published just before this meeting.

It is not consistent with a pathway towards 80% clean energy. This is because we have seen that although the demand will go up, the level of renewable generation does not go up at a rate that is consistent with that. This means that our relative share of renewable generation could be decreasing, even though we are installing more capacity. The plan targets 1 GW of onshore solar PV, yet the climate action plan sets 2.5 GW as an indicative target. As I said in my opening statement, the Minister said that that should be a baseline. We think that we can get to 5 GW of the utilities scale there. Therefore, this plan is not in keeping with any of that.

Essentially, this is the plan that will determine whether they build the kind of infrastructure that is needed to connect all these projects. Each project has its own connections, like, for example, an R road or an L road. The local connections are the way to get there. However, they all have to be aggregated up into something bigger. That is the transmission network. That is what EirGrid is responsible for managing. That is also what is needed to take the power from all these individual renewable generators. That highway is not currently being built or planned for appropriately to get us on the pathway towards the 80% target. We understand that EirGrid is planning to update it this year. However, that plan needs to be delivered with urgency and then the next steps need to be taken.