Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

A total of €335 million per year comes from the public service obligation levy, which is supposed to be focused on developing renewable energy. It would be interesting to see a breakdown and to discover exactly where it is going and the extent to which it is going to local projects or smaller-scale community-based projects, co-operatives and so on.

I welcome the fact that the Minister has referred to September. At least we have a date. Regardless, I believe the roll-out of these projects is rather slow. Money is available through the strategic investment fund amounting to billions of euro. Sources of funding are available. Many schemes could be self-funding if we put in some of the money up front. They would actually pay for themselves in the medium to long term. Anyway, I do not believe the roll-out, investment or focus on these things has been extensive enough.

As part of the energy review I hope the Minister will discuss an option that I have suggested to him, which was suggested to me, in turn, by the Woodland League. This is the issue of 500,000 acres of Coillte lands that are not being used by Coillte but that could be used by local communities and co-operatives to develop these kinds of project.

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