Ms Ruth Buggie:

Within our sustainable energy communities programme we provide each community with its own mentor. The mentors are assigned in a local authority region to foster that relationship building with a local authority so that they can integrate the different plans at that level. We are spending about €1.5 million a year on that mentoring service. There are 31 around the country. That is real hand-holding for communities to support them to achieve their ambitions.

The development of energy master plans, in which about one third of our communities have participated, helps identify a register of opportunity of projects that then leads them to our community energy grant. All of last year's community energy grant had an SEC participant. It shows that they are participating in it.

We have communities that want to set up their own one-stop shops. The biggest challenge around community ambition is nearly moderating it. Communities have so much ambition so we do our best to help them achieve that. Working through the energy master plan really does help an order of magnitude of which projects make the most sense for the community to pursue. Many of our communities are also pursuing interest in renewable electricity projects too. They work with my colleagues on that too.