Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirleach. It is great to be made to feel welcome. I also welcome the guests. This has been very useful. I will talk about Carlinn Hall, a community heating system in Dundalk. It includes 200-odd houses. Initially it was biomass. There have been many twists and turns but it was replaced by gas when gas was cheap and gas is no longer cheap so that is a disaster scenario. It is not a good environmental situation either. There has been a fair amount of engagement between myself, the management company, Frontline which provides the heat which buys from Energia. There have been some dealings with the likes of the eco village in Cloughjordan to try to come up with efficiencies. That is all good stuff. The only real long-term solution is switching to some type of biomass, perhaps woodchip, or geothermal. The SEAI was talking about a feasibility study. I assume that is where it is. Can we get into some detail about that? I am interested too in specifics about the grant structure that would pay for it. The way I see this working in the short term, unless something changes, is that while Frontline was happy enough to buy heat from anyone to a degree, the only way it would be feasible would be for a company to come in and do it and a management company, which was really the residents, would have to come to a deal with them. They would be on the hook financially and they would basically be signing in blood. That might be the only way to deliver a solution. I am taking up time that SEAI could be filling with information.