Mr. John Mullins:

I thank Senator Wall for his questions. We have a job of work to get up to that 75,000 in the first instance. Fortunately, we are being assisted by significant donations. I mentioned the SSE Airtricity donation, and we have a number of other potentially significant donations coming into the charity. The focus here is about establishing an infrastructure to allow us to serve the 75,000. I hope we can get to a position whereby we can reach 550,000 homes across the country and more. As I said, last night we could have filled 1.3 million tanks, as opposed 550,000, so there is a real opportunity to have an ambition to not set a cap or a ceiling, effectively, on the number of water tanks we are going to access.

Senator Wall's point about the sports clubs is very apt in the same way as that made by Deputy Ó Laoghaire regarding DEIS schools. I am a member of a GAA club in rural Cork. We are always complaining about the price of hot water, which is one of our biggest expenses in the club. We will certainly take that on board, but we need to do this in a stacked order of priority. First, we have to deal with the people who are in real fuel poverty and those who are recognised within social housing. Then we can layer on, maybe in parallel, DEIS schools and sports clubs. We are very interested in other suggestions of facilities, be they community halls, particular units, nursing homes or whatever, that can be added over time. Those could be in urban, semi-urban or rural areas. It is about building up the stack.

It is really important we get the support of members of both Houses and that we do not face any regulatory impediments into the future that could stymie the implementation of this at scale. We are asking all the members here to be ambassadors for EnergyCloud. That is a critical message, and I hope they have a better understanding of what this is about and the real potential it has to put money back into people's pockets and give them peace of mind with respect to their electricity bills going forward.