Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I had some IT issues so I do not have the comprehensive speech I was going to make. I will address some points relating to what is proposed in the Bill. Essentially, it responds to the need for emergency backup electricity generation, which was introduced in legislation back at the turn of the year. What it fails to do is highlight the very slow rate of progress in terms of trying to deliver renewable energy and also with the warmer homes initiative. Those are two significant deficits we have in the economy.

I pay great credit to my colleague, Deputy Naughten, who in recent years has been promoting the idea of converting some of the redundant power stations, namely, Lanesborough and Shannonbridge, to biomass for the purpose of generating up to 250 MW of electricity annually. This would be done by incentivising farmers to grow 10,000 acres of willow. It would also mean that we could take forestry thinnings to produce electricity. However, the Government totally refused to look at the proposal on the basis of the climate action plan, yet here we are today implementing diesel-generated electricity generation backup at Tarbert in order to try to provide a backup for electricity generation. We have been remiss in rolling out the wind development policy. The Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, has still not been instituted.

I am not sure where the community dividend lies legislatively speaking, but I had a meeting recently with some of the people involved with wind energy and, as I understand it, the community dividend for one of the large wind farms on the south coast would be between €1 million and €1.5 million per annum for 15 years, which is wholly inadequate given the total outlay on the project might be €1 billion. I urge the Minister of State to look at that aspect of the licensing framework before these licences are considered.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications is responsible for the warmer homes initiative. Unfortunately, the underperformance in that regard is stellar. In five years, the average cost has gone from €3,450 in 2017 to €22,000. We are probably providing greater infrastructure, but it is hard to know how much greater it is. Deputy Naughten outlined some of the issues he encountered when trying to apply for the scheme. What is clear is that we are not keeping up with the rate of demand. The Government gave a significant commitment that we would be able to roll out the scheme, but it is patently clear that we are running at less than 50% of the applications per year and in terms of the costs arising. This is something the Minister of State must examine. I note that additional personnel resources are to be given to the SEAI, but we have a significant problem with the recruitment of people for jobs in construction in this country. It was highlighted when the policy was introduced that both sectors would be competing for labour. I refer to the construction sector and the retrofitting scheme. That is exactly what is happening and it is pushing up the price. Perhaps the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment should consider bringing in skilled labour from abroad. We must consider changing the work permit system to allow us to bring in labour. Otherwise, we are just going to keep on raising the cost of the schemes and this is all going to come back on the taxpayer.

I reiterate a point that was already made about hard-pressed families which is that they are paying for the change in the climate agenda. Having put charges and levies on people's electricity bills for proposed carbon capture and sequestration and the development of renewable energy, we are now asking them to pay for diesel generation and we are happy to set aside our environmental planning laws to make that a reality. That is not a very positive step.

I highlight the amendment tabled by Deputy Naughten for a 12-month sunset clause on the legislation. I endorse that because I do not think we can have this runaway development of a diesel-generated backup. We must give impetus to renewables and find a way to incentivise and accelerate the development of solar energy and offshore wind energy in this country because we need to do it far more quickly than we are doing currently. That would give us some relative security in terms of energy supply. It is paramount that we include a sunset clause in the legislation, as per Deputy Naughten's amendment.

See this speech in context