Dr. John Upton:

Teagasc has a role to play in each of those areas - research, advisory and education. To achieve our national objective of meeting 80% of our electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2030, a paradigm shift is required across the board among all electricity consumers. Farming is a particular example of that.

On the research side, as I mentioned, Teagasc is committed to a research programme to fill in any gaps in knowledge that exist. On education, it has run some education training courses for farm advisers which will help disseminate the available knowledge to these key stakeholders to empower them to implement change on their farms in terms of adopting renewables. Similarly, in education, there are modules on renewables built into many of our farm systems courses. The purpose of those courses is to bring the next generation up to speed on the research that has been done and how it can be applied to farms.