Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Essentially, there are two basic contracts under which wind farms operate. One is the original idea, where there was a minimum guaranteed price provided under REFIT and they were guaranteed that no matter what happened they would get this much money per MWh. However, recently we have run renewable energy support scheme options where there is effectively a maximum price a wind farm can bid to say what they will gain as their income. The more recently contracted wind farms did not make money out of this. They were not able to charge excess profits in the way the older wind farms were. It is the older wind farms we are trying to catch on this. I say wind farms but it is also any type of generation that earned an unfair profit. If we try to raise so much money by setting a level to bring back as much windfall gain as possible from the companies, we can create a situation where the signal we have sent out to anybody who is bidding in the next renewable energy support scheme auction is that they have to set a higher price to cover that risk. We could end up paying by deterring investment. We must remember that we are in a Union of 27 countries and that those companies that we want to come to Ireland and invest to build wind farms can go and build them in any of those other countries. We have to find a balance between recouping the unfair profits that were generated by those companies and creating a situation where nobody wants to build a wind farm in Ireland again. We have set that, through analysis, at €120 per MWh or 12 cent a unit, which is not a large amount of money for a unit of electricity. That is the level we have set. Anything above that they will have to return to the State and the State will take that money and give it to electricity consumers in the form of targeted schemes such as increased fuel allowance, electricity credits or some other form of subsidy to people who use electricity.