Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have not seen that research but I will read it if the Deputy could forward it on to me. I will happily respond to the Deputy once I have read and reviewed it. I agree with the Deputy. Roof after roof in the North has solar PV panels and it is not exactly the sunniest place on the planet. We have failed to do that in the South. During my previous term in this office, 12 years ago, we introduced a microgeneration support price scheme of 19 cent per kWh. That was at the start of the solar revolution. Unfortunately, the succeeding Government removed that scheme. In fairness to my predecessor, he introduced such a proposal in the climate action plan that he developed and we will see it introduced early next year.

I have seen it in action. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to visit the Fair Play café in Ringsend, one of the community energy projects that have just received support of €29 million. The café has installed 12 kW of solar panels. Their experience has been fantastic because it works, integrates with their business and was easy to introduce. They can see the level of power that they are using and to which customers can connect. There is considerable potential in the development of solar power.

EirGrid provided me with analysis a year or two ago when I was an Opposition spokesperson, as the Deputy is now. I asked what level of solar power could be generated on roofs.

I am going on memory, but I understand if we had 700,000 houses with solar panels on their roofs and 45,000 businesses that would provide 5% of our total power supply. That may not sound significant, but one of the attractive things about solar power is that it would be very much complementary to other renewable power supplies, such as wind and so on. It would provide a very stable local power supply source which, contrary to the original arguments against solar power, would strengthen and complement rather than undermine the grid.

We will be using a lot of power at a distributed level as we move towards electrifying the transport and heating systems. We will need every source of power and I am committed to the development of solar power not just on houses or smaller rooftops but for larger business applications where rooftop solar could be introduced and become an integral part of the overall switch to 100% renewables which is where we are going.

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