Mr. Rory Somers:

I will add to what our colleagues in SEAI said and give the policy framework on communities. The Government is dedicated to supporting the community network to engage in the transition. We have a suite of policy measures that has been implemented in that vein. The first of those, in terms of communities, was to build a dedicated, ring-fenced community pot into each RESS. It is a competitive auction for relatively large-scale renewable projects. As our colleague said, seven projects are currently in RESS 1, involving 23 MW. They are a mixture of wind and solar projects. That is direct community involvement.

Our colleagues also referenced that RESS has a community benefit fund. All projects, including community projects, must contribute €2 per megawatt for all electricity generated. There are projects already generating electricity. We have two or three projects that are already connected. One of them is in Ashford, which is the first solar farm project in Ireland. That means those funds are now beginning to get populated with moneys. The fund is there to support local communities and local people impacted by those projects. That money will begin to become available for community projects in the area, including renewable projects. There is €4 million per annum in terms of the community benefit from RESS 1 alone, across all the projects, and we expect somewhere in the region of €5 million plus for RESS 2, depending on what the final decision is. That is real money coming into a distributed network of community and commercially related local community sectors.

RESS was the first vehicle for the community supports in this suite of measures. It started with slightly larger-scale projects. As our colleague mentioned, they are 0.5 MW up to 5 MW. That is quite a challenge for communities. We recognise that it is not easy to just go from zero to a relatively large project which requires a lot of professional co-ordination and funding.

We have moved forward with the microgeneration support scheme, as my colleague mentioned in her opening remarks. That provides grants for, currently, domestic and, soon, non-domestic, including community-based, organisations around solar PV. They will include sports organisations and non-domestic businesses, including local authorities. For slightly larger microgenerators from 6 kW to 50 kW, we will introduce an export tariff premium in order for those companies or organisations to get involved in installing solar PV, typically, but also other retrofit technologies. That is beginning to provide on the other end of the spectrum, in the microgeneration space, supports that can be accessed by the community.

We propose to go to public consultation later this year on a draft small-scale generation support scheme, which fills in the space between 50 kW at the smallest end up to RESS size, maybe even up to 1 MW. RESS is a competitive auction, so 15 community projects entered RESS and nine were successful. There is a fall-out rate but we are considering, and it will be part of the public consultation in the small-scale generation, using our ability to use the climate, energy and environmental aid guidelines, CEEAG, from the EU to avoid forcing communities into competitive environment with the potential to make a guaranteed feed-in tariff scheme available to them. That involves lower hurdles for communities to get involved, is on a smaller scale to start smaller, requires less financing and creates a less competitive environment for them to enter into.