Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like my other colleagues, I am delighted to be here on this historic occasion at the first broadcast from the islands.

Ms Ní Shearcaigh is the manager of the Aran Islands Energy Co-operative. That is obviously a new company because this form of energy is relatively new in recent years. Does the co-operative carry out the retrofitting and insulation of heat pumps or whatever to the houses on the islands? If it does, has it carried out any surveys on small domestic wind turbines? From an Irish point of view, when we have wind in abundance, it is incredible that there are no small domestic wind turbines, or at least nobody seems to be championing these type of turbines, while there are many people championing retrofitting and solar panels. I have solar panels. I have 6.5 kW solar panels on my house, and I can tell the committee that a bad day is a bad day from an energy point of view. Whether it is the middle of summer or the middle of winter, it is non-existent on those days. We should be going down the route of small wind turbines as a nation. As an energy company, has the Aran Islands Energy Co-Operative done any research into small wind turbines? If we look at the likes of Sweden and Switzerland, solar panels are almost non-existent in those countries because they have nearly six months of darkness and they have seen that they are not of much of a benefit to them. Has the co-operative done any work on that?