Mr. John Mullins:

That should absolutely be the case in policy terms. I know from building solar farms in Ireland that there are local gains. They would not gain unless the solar farm was in the middle of the community. There is an opportunity to have an aggregated piece of that overall community fund dedicated. To be fair to SSE Airtricity, that is exactly what it is doing. That €2.5 million donation to the charity is on the basis of its recognition of a community fund. I hope that all the members of Wind Energy Ireland – I also had conversations with board members yesterday in the Irish Solar Energy Association - will engage in this and that there will be meeting of minds between the members of this committee, the Departments involved and also the wind and solar generators out there.

I suppose that when we get to the offshore stuff, we are on a completely different scale. We are talking about tens of millions of euro in community gain. If we take the Celtic interconnector, which is passing through my village in east Cork, that is actually enormously benefiting villages in rural areas right across east Cork. There is no doubt that a portion of that could be used to support DEIS schools or hot water tanks in GAA and soccer clubs, and also clearly at the very core of where we are starting, local authority housing and social housing right across the country.