Mr. John Fogarty:

I am from Templederry. Twenty years ago, when we set out to develop a community wind farm, we did not think it would take 12 years, and 20 years on we did not think ours would be the only community-owned wind farm in the country. That is a testament to the fact that the system is geared against community generation projects.

My principal purpose is to outline the difficulty in accessing the grid. This is our biggest problem. If we set out in the morning to develop a 4 MW solar farm in our parish, we would set about making a grid application. In our area there would be a queue of seven or eight in our node. It takes ESB Networks 12 months to process any one of those. Therefore, the earliest we could expect to have our grid application processed would be eight years, and that would be if nobody contested the grid offer received, so it could take anything between eight and 12 years. Nobody can keep a community group active for that long, so the system is geared against us. What are the obstacles? The principal one is getting the grid applications processed.

In addition, the process has changed recently in that planning is now required before making a grid application. This means making a commitment to spend between €25,000 and €100,000 just to take a punt on getting an affordable grid offer down the line. It is the same for small-scale connection to the grid. For a farmer in Germany who has solar panels on his or her farm buildings, exporting to the grid is part of and supplements his or her income. We just cannot do that here. We are allowed to export 6 kW from a domestic building and 11 kW from a commercial building. That is a paltry amount, which would certainly not supplement an income. For these reasons, it is almost impossible at present to get a community project off the ground.

We very much welcome the Minister's announcement that there will be a community pot in the first renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, auction. That has been the first bit of light in the tunnel for about 20 years. If all we need to do is supplement that with our ring-fencing of grid income to match whatever is in the community pot as regards the feed-in tariff, it creates a major opening for community generation to take place.

As regards Templederry, the advantage of a community generation project is huge. We have two 4.6 MW wind turbines in our parish, but the income generated from them is equivalent to that from a 30-turbine development by an outside developer because in the case of a developer all the money is moved out of the area. We are very surprised that Deputies do not promote community renewable projects around the country. Every parish is capable of owning between three and five turbines. That would turn local economies inside out and would be huge from a community point of view.

The one thing that has helped us along the way is Tipperary Energy Agency. Mr. Kenny from the agency is sitting beside me. I do not think we would have got to a conclusion without it. We see that SEAI is appointing consultants to help the special areas of conservation, SACs, as they are formed. We suggest that an energy agency be set up in every area and region because the knowledge builds up in the energy agency and is retained for future projects. Tipperary Energy Agency has probably been the most important factor in our success, and I especially thank Mr. Kenny for that. I will hand over to him now.