Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State will be aware, one of the biggest overheads for a small business is the cost of heating and electricity. I will raise the particular issue of small businesses operating as social enterprises. I refer to small cafes, community centres, community crèches, kids' clubs and recycling and upcycling businesses. There is a vast range of small businesses out there. The core objective of social enterprises is to provide community services on a not-for-profit basis. Money earned by these small businesses is used to fund and improve the business and to pay a living wage so making ends meet in the current cost-of-living crisis is extremely hard for many of them.

The use of green energy would greatly reduce social enterprises' overheads and improve overall well-being in our communities. The initial installation of solar panels, wall insulation, heat recovery systems and electric car charging points is very expensive and would decimate the budget of any small social enterprise. We need to ensure that proper funding is allocated to businesses to help with these installations and to ensure they are dealt with separately within the planning procedures to prevent any delays when they are ready to make that transition.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to something that was on the television the other night, namely, the incubator hub in Tallaght. This is a project aimed at start-ups and small enterprises in south County Dublin. It installed solar panels, heat pumps and heat recovery systems with air exchange. This is all designed to deliver carbon-neutral heating and power. The hub's energy is now provided solely through green means and it provides power and heat to co-working spaces, start-up SMEs and the hub's cafes. By providing proper funds and reliefs and amending planning regulations, we can allow these community hubs and social enterprises to become centres of excellence for sustainability, offering a comfortable co-working space and coffee shops with a minimal environmental footprint in the local community.

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