Mr. Seamus Boland:

I think both members are on the ball. I remember being in Scotland in 2004 when I was visiting a person I knew from our own area who had bought land. The first thing he did was to set up a wind facility on his land, which he had newly bought. He was getting paid the commercial rates for producing that electricity. Yet, for some reason in this country, we want people to produce the electricity, but we want to take it for nothing and sell it on. The members raise a very good point.

As we said earlier, we are talking about solving problems, certainly for the one-off houses, farmhouses, etc. Solar is a possibility, and it can work reasonably well, but it demands a little bit of work and a lot of investigation and interrogation. This goes back to my point about having strong, solid information that is independently available, because there are a number of companies in this space at the moment. You are trying to make up your mind about which has the better programme. As the Senator said, they are trying to make some money as well. You hope that what you buy is resilient enough to last the pace, that it does not finish up or the company does not finish up. That is a danger.

Again, there is a real opportunity in rural Ireland to let farms harness the energy, distribute it, use it for themselves and sell it on. The sooner we start getting serious about that, the better.