Dr. David Connolly:

I can only agree with a lot of the Deputy's statement. The Deputy's reflections there are exactly my own sense from the crossroads, which is that in the past it had to be led by the local authorities. However, as the Deputy has reflected upon, the resources available are so tight and given the things the local authorities have to do now, this is a huge additional burden to take on. To date it has been really only been Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council, with the benefit of an energy agency, that have had the capacity to try to take on projects. Our sense from the membership is that there is a huge appetite for the private sector to develop projects and to partner with local authorities in many different business models to try to make projects happen, where the skills and expertise, as well as the investment, can come but where the partnership can be done in lots of different ways. There are probably six or seven mainstream business models that can be done, depending on circumstances. It usually comes down to the individual local authority rather than it being a case of "This is the right one to do". I imagine that those types of conversations will happen very naturally and very early in any kind of a project because one would have to engage with the local authority very early in a project. Out of that would emerge ideas discussions and negotiations around what might suit the particular project.

I will also reflect briefly for the committee that from the numbers we have seen, from the analysis we have carried out in the Irish District Energy Association, IrDEA, and from talking to projects, the conditions for really good scalable projects in Ireland absolutely exist. For example, I would say that Poolbeg is one of the best opportunities in Europe and not just in Ireland. This analysis is somewhat out of date because we did it back in 2018 but when IrDEA did the analysis back in 2018, at that time there were so many different sources of heat in Poolbeg - and not just the incinerator - there was more heat going into the Liffey than was needed to heat all of Dublin. This was not a case of going a kilometre or two down the Liffey and that would be the end of it. This was the scale of heat available because there were so many other sources on the Poolbeg peninsula that it was enough to remove natural gas from Dublin city. The project is a fantastic one. I am aware that Dublin City Council has just released a new document on it last week, which is great, and we are hoping there will be more momentum now in trying to see the project realised. From all of the technical analysis it is a really excellent project. It is definitely not the only one, however, but there are conditions. Professor Mathiesen referred to a heat atlas. which is also on the IrDEA website. One of the partners for developing this was the University of Flensburg, which Professor Mathiesen works with. They literally show every town and city in Ireland in a certain colour indicating what part of it is suitable for district heating. As we mentioned earlier, up to half of the buildings in Ireland are suitable for that.

The step change we see to really unlocking this would be a signal through the likes of the Planning and Development Act that people would be facilitated in being able to put pipes in the street in this regard. This would send the signal that people should start developing these projects. It would send a signal that if one starts now trying to create these projects then people will be able to deliver them perhaps in two years' time or whenever it may be when people are allowed to build them. The signal is not there at the moment that this will be possible. For many people, not having that signal means that the door is shut for now and they cannot spend hundreds of thousands of euro doing feasibility studies, sites surveys, or scanning the roads. A signal through the Planning and Development Act that this was starting to be created and worked on would be a first real and significant kick. We can share our own position paper on that piece of work also.

There are other two or three other items, one of which is replicating the grants scheme in the UK. That has proven successful and I would say the UK is a similar state to Ireland in terms of gas-based heating systems being converted to district heating. The second point, which I will leave to Ms Murphy to elaborate on, is that of equalising the grants between heat pumps and district heating. Right now, we are incentivising people to put heat pumps in cities, which is undermining the entire business case to have district heating where we can actually put into a network. Ms Murphy might want to deal with those matters.