Mr. Michael Spellman:

Senator Paul Daly raised an issue and Mr. Enright made reference to it in his reply. As I outlined earlier, we could see an expansion of the energy on a co-operative level. For example, the group water schemes have been well served by their involvement in ICOS and the co-operative structure. We need Government support for energy projects and they should be community-led to get a better buy-in as far as the community is concerned. The difficulty with many of those energy projects for many years has been the opposition and the difficulty in procuring planning permission. If the local community benefits from the existence of such a project in the area, that would be a way of avoiding that difficulty. To talk about killing two birds with the one stone, if we generate more of our electricity from a renewable source here on a co-operative or community basis, we would need to import less of what is required to generate our energy today. It is a win-win situation for everybody. It would take care of the issue raised by my friend here regarding diversification. It would be a way for the farmer to diversify from what he has been doing well for generations. He can see this as another opportunity.

As it is being done right across Europe, why not give support to put panels on the roofs of the big buildings that exist in every farmyard? We will be able to add an additional dimension to that very shortly because the technology for battery storage is improving which would allow us to make better use of the energy generated from the roof. There are enormous opportunities and they can all be done on a co-operative community-led basis.