Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The small-scale generation scheme will be launched later this year. The Deputy asked about legislation relating to private wire, which is to allow transmission of electricity by private sector companies without using EirGrid. I will have to come back to the Deputy with details rather than offer an answer now. There is massively increased ambition for solar roll-out. It is not just for solar farms and it will not be concentrated on a small number of large corporate generators. The aim is to get it onto every agricultural shed in the country. There is significant desire among the agriculture community, with many applications from farmers. This is greatly helped by the fact that we have removed the requirement for planning permission and allowed people to generate money from their excess electricity when they are not there. Every school in the country, every hospital and every public building, as far as possible, will be covered in solar panels. We want this to be a genuine democratic system whereby everybody, insofar as is possible, gets a solar panel on their roof.

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