Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy

Carbon Budget: Climate Change Advisory Council

2:00 am

Ms Marie Donnelly:

We need to ensure that when decisions are taken with regard to access to the grid and planning, the provisions of section 15 of the Act are taken into account. This has recently come to the fore. It has not been implemented in a very strict sense up until now. It is important that all public bodies in particular follow the provisions of the legislation and take into account the impact of their decisions on our emissions. That is a key issue. There is a second issue where we need to be able to talk to people and explain why we are making this transition. Why is there a wind farm going up down the road from people and what does it mean for them and their society? We may need to think about the community support benefit schemes to ensure that they give long-term benefits to communities, not just short term, which has tended to be the case up until now. A third area is that I believe it is important that once projects are in the pipeline, either they are processed through the RESS auction system or they are fed into a corporate power purchaser agreement system in order that they can be implemented, developed, built and energised as quickly as possible.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.