Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish this was a real question and answer session where we had an opportunity to tease things out. I will raise a number of issues. Obviously, we must reduce our carbon footprint and we need to get on with the job. In doing so we must involve communities. There are two specific issues. One is on community gain. Who will get to spend the money? Will companies get to spend the money they will be statutorily obliged to spend, or will they be told to hand that money over to some entity such as a Leader company or a local authority to spend? I do not like the idea of the big companies coming with largesse they may be statutorily obliged to spend. How does one define the community that should gain because of the pain? That issue needs to be clarified to be clear. There is a fair spend of it. There is another issue in this regard. I take it this will extend to offshore wind generation. Again, it becomes even more important to define which communities will gain. Will it be the coastal community or, in some great metamorphosis, will the companies manage to transfer the money far away from the local community that has been impacted?

On the issue of feed-in, I heard the Minister speak of community involvement in energy. The other element of this is micro-generation, where individuals, particularly in rural Ireland, can get involved either through solar or wind energy. What is the situation in respect of a good, decent feed-in tariff which they have in other countries? There are very good models of this. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. It could be hugely attractive. People could produce enough electricity for their own uses, for charging up their motor vehicles and for feeding into the tariff when they do not need the electricity. What is the policy on a feed-in tariff for micro-generation?

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