Mr. Pat Farrell:

We have two methods for the shoulders of the season because we supply strawberries from roughly St. Patrick's Day to the middle of November, or we try to anyway. We are even looking at technologies to expand the shoulders of the season because it would expand Irish production. To do that in the shoulders of the season, you have to add some heat to the crops because it is outside the season. That is just a fact. If it came from Belgium or any other part of Europe, heat would be applied as well. At the moment, there are two forms. We get our heat from the traditional boiler method - gas. We are lucky enough to have a combined heat and power, CHP, unit. That unit is classed as renewable energy. You use the gas but from that gas, heat and electricity are produced. There are two elements. From the gas going in, you get almost 85% or 90% efficiency. That is very useful. By the end of this season, I hope, with funding through the producer organisation, we plan to install a heat pump system. That will be from electricity. Part of it will come from our CHP, which is also renewable. If we need some from the grid, we hear talk that a lot of that is renewable wind energy. That will also reduce our need for boilers. We have other plans in place to put solar panels in at two of our sites, one in County Louth for next year and, I hope, in County Dublin perhaps next year or the year after. Our heat pump system will nearly run off the electricity from the solar panels because, with the development in technology, even in February, March and April, if you get bright days or even when there is diffuse radiation on cloudy days, more energy is generated with those technologies. We have a lot of plans in those areas. We currently have a renewable CHP. We have immediate plans this year as well.