Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I will finish with that in a second, because I want to combine that with something that Senator O'Reilly asked about. If I understood correctly, he was concerned about the issue of balancing job creation and job loss. All the evidence from all the economists that we hear from is that overall, the transition will create jobs. Second, it is worth noting that the International Trade Union Confederation now repeats all the time that there are no jobs on a dead planet. The choice is not between keeping the jobs we have now and the risk of losing some, it is about creating sustainable jobs for the future.

The sector that Senator O'Reilly did not mention but may be on his mind is the peat sector. There is no alternative other than some sort of just transition task force. Any time a US company announces it is closing down its factory in Ireland we have a task force overnight. The Industrial Development Authority, IDA, Enterprise Ireland, Solas and all the agencies knock their heads together to find a use for the factory and jobs for the workers. It will be ten years next month since the Government was first advised, not by us environmentalists but by its advisers, that it was time to close the peat stations and stop burning peat for electricity. If we had set up a just transition commission then, we would be fine. We now need to do it in a two-year timescale to close the peat stations in 2020. There needs to be community development support and just transition support, not just for training but for the development of those areas.

Briefly, Deputy Stanley raised the issue of micro-generation. To address the issue of societal buy-in, I think it is possible to engage people in dialogues and get them thinking, but it is much easier to get them engaged in something practical. I want every school in the country to have solar panels on its roof, so that schools can sell the electricity they do not use back to the grid, save money on their energy bills and invest that in educational activities. That is what would really get communities to buy into this and engage in this. This also applies to farm buildings, community halls and parish halls. We do not just need the grant system that the Minister is proposing to pilot from this summer, of which we have not yet seen evidence. We need a price, a payment for solar energy. It was not in the strategy for renewable energy. They say they are interested in it in the Department. It is overwhelmingly what experts advise and what the public wants. If we do that, then we have a real chance to actually practically engage people in something from which they can build their interest and their engagement in the transition we all want to see.