Mr. Declan Meally:

We are the sustainable energy authority and we feed the information we get into the Department which decides the policy through the Minister and the Government and the setting of that policy. We provide data from our programmes and information, and feedback on the grants, to see how things are working and make sure it is fed back into the policy.

We have to scale up renewables. We have been very successful with our renewable electricity. We are at 40%, on average, for renewable electricity. Pretty much all of this is onshore. It has come about in the past year or two that there has been a community benefit fund in the renewable auctions. We fed into this and we are part of the oversight of community benefits. When a wind farm or a solar farm generates electricity a portion of it is to be fed back to the local community. This is part and part of the policy. Communities are engaged at a very early stage in terms of understanding what is happening. Communities can also develop their own farms. We provide assistance for this in the context of community renewable plans. Through the community benefit fund, there is an opportunity to benefit for people within a particular radius of the installations. Significant funds are given back to communities over several years. This could be used for social and amenity purposes, and for environmental opportunities, such as upgrading homes, schools or businesses and matched with grant funding. All of this is part of the ongoing policy debate and part of the opportunities for communities as projects are developed. We feed into this on a regular basis. We will be part of the oversight of this community benefit fund once the funds start flowing.

More recently, we have provided what is not quite a one-stop shop but, rather, an information portal for planning projects.

It helps identify the steps and stages renewable projects have to go through. We provide that through the website and have opened up the portal so that people in communities and areas can see the projects that are happening and understand the opportunities and where they need to go if developing their own projects. We are constantly feeding into that and into the policy piece. I hope that answers the Deputy's questions.