Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir:

I was going to comment on this with regard to one of the offshoots of the initial initiative. What was interesting about the example I have given is that initially we had a very narrow focus in many ways. It was about electric vehicles, heat pumps and solar panels, and trying to see how the community could become familiar with these and what technological adoption and acceleration could arise from it.

Initially it was structured as individual-to-individual mobilisation. What we saw emerging was a range of initiatives around sustainability. Farmers came together to set up a sustainable energy community, as did the tourism and hospitality sector. We saw a flourishing in the emergence of various activities going in different directions. One or two of these do focus on the circular economy but it is bottom-up initiatives that are emerging from the enabling support which we provide and engage with through the partnership. It is a very interesting example of how we see something evolve.

From our perspective, it was important to make ourselves available to the community. Rather than going in and saying we need a circular economy approach we went in to respond to the community's request for support with how it could transition to a low-carbon future. A number of questions have been asked as to whether this can be scaled up. We have seen that it has scaled deep through the emergence of more and more initiatives blossoming. It is a very interesting case study. Certainly what we see is a lot of regional pride. It is not quite the national pride Deputy Bruton spoke about but we are seeing a lot of regional pride in the focus on sustainability.