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

In fairness, I have listened to most of this but that does not mean I will not need to be corrected at some stage about something I did not hear. Professor Mathiesen’s take was interesting. Deputies O’Rourke and Smith dealt with the issue of communal heating systems. On some level we all see the potential in regard to district heating systems. Everyone gets the idea of Poolbeg and this huge volume of waste heat. Why not use it? There is not even too much worry about losses from efficiency or whatever, as it is all waste. That is spectacular. However, a particularly Irish situation has been created. There was a Danish idea on communal heating systems being fed by some form of biomass. A number of them were built throughout Britain and Ireland. For multiple different reasons, they morphed and became fed by gas. From an environmental point of view, as has been said, the difficulty is that most of the heat loss happens through the house. In some cases, there could be a 50% efficiency rate. That means half is being lost and, therefore, it takes twice the amount of gas to feed. When gas prices went through the roof, people were absolutely hammered. Where did this come from? It was probably only then that people discovered what sort of heating system they were on.

Carlinn Hall in Dundalk is one of these. It was actually opened by the then Minister, Deputy Ryan, in 2007. It went through a series of Celtic Tiger disasters.

I believe Britain has changed the rules. It is something we need to do so that there can no longer be gas-fed systems and no new ones can be built. I have spoken to Kaizen and to Frontline who tell me they are constantly talking to developers who are putting these systems in, saying to them not to do so in any way, shape or circumstances. The problem for them is they will take the calls from customers who are looking at ridiculous prices now. They say they make their money from the upkeep of the system and not from the price. However, when you are called Frontline Energy, it is probably not the greatest name in these particular circumstances and you are going to take the heat, for want of a better term.

That is a particular circumstance we have here. There is a steering group on district heating. I would like to think it will come out with recommendations fairly soon to deal with this anomaly. It needs to be dealt with. It is the Achilles' heel for the witnesses in regard to selling district heating. If someone came along regarding laying pipe, no matter how good an idea it was, unless that pipe was going to Carlinn Hall to alleviate the problem we have at the minute, that would be an issue.

I had a decent enough interaction with the Minister, Deputy Ryan. It is not the first time I brought up this issue. He said the SEAI was:

...to complete a report on the viability of retrofitting an existing communal heating system with a shallow geothermal energy source using Carlinn Hall as the case study. [That has been carried out.]

The report will be provided in two parts. Recommendations will be made on heat network efficiency, options for a low-carbon heat alternative and the costs of installation and operation. The final draft of this initial element is due for review by the project steering group and is expected to be completed within the next month. The second part will extract the main learning on heat network decarbonisation in Ireland. This part is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.

Obviously, I would prefer if this was already done and dusted and we could move on. I hope this will be relatively positive and that we can operate this, because we looked at solutions such as putting back in woodchip and whatever else. I heard all these stories that the reason people switched was because you could not get woodchip. This was during the glory days of renewable heat incentive, RHI. However, I spoke to the developer and he said that actually all these stories turned out not to be true, that it was a case of some particular delineation or marking scheme the European Commission had at the time that resulted in gas ending up being higher than woodchip and that, to meet the planning requirements, they had to switch to gas. I have put these questions into the Minister, the Department and its officials. I am fairly sure that if I do not get answers fairly quickly, they will switch to parliamentary questions. What I have pointed out is an anomaly.

There probably is a solution for biomass. Do not get me wrong. Anyone in a management company in Carlinn Hall or wherever will want to see the outworkings of this geothermal study. He or she will not want to pick the second-best option when the first one might be around the corner. It is only around the corner, however, if the SEAI is following up with a grant scheme, because a third-party company will have to do this building and all the rest of it.

I am interested in the witnesses' views in that regard. I am quite taken with what they are saying about the distances as we all would have all understood them. I also heard of studies carried out on heat storage and moving it from one place to another. I am thinking almost in cartoon terms, but I was told that it was almost as if a 40-foot truck would have container units that would take heat. I think have thrown out enough. I am interested in the view of witnesses in this regard. It is a particular problem that needs to be dealt with legislatively. We then need to deal with the retrofitting scenario. I get the witnesses' idea about heat pumps but sometimes we are looking at the larger, collective scenario.

It might involve bespoke solutions where it is part heat pump, part geothermal and part fed from whatever. Unless this is organised at that level, we will have all these anomalies or nothing will happen because there are too many bad news stories out there. Anyway, that is enough.