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

As it happens, I had a meeting yesterday with a variety of community energy organisations. The first subject we discussed at the meeting was the fact that there is a recognition that it has not built up at anywhere near the scale, speed and diversity that we want. We will have to continue to make sure that it does and start to revise whatever programmes we have in place.

My understanding is that possibly three or four of the projects that were among the first to go through the RESS will be energised but they have had real difficulties. Of the eight projects in the second RESS auction, we expect that they will be delivered but that is not certain. The difficulties have typically revolved around grid connection and the cost of grid connection. I mentioned earlier the difficulty with planning and the timelines involved in that. There is also a difficulty in terms of the speed with which community groups are able to respond. In many of the instances a developer can make a quick decision, whereas for a community group, given the nature of the kind of inclusive process required, it takes longer.

The State has recognised that. We revised our approach by giving direct grant supports to help community groups. The SEAI administers them. We agreed yesterday that we need to be more ambitious in how they are deployed. We must not be afraid to make some risky investments where we provide grant support and a project does not actually develop or does not happen. That is part of what we need to do to help make it happen. As part of the meeting yesterday, we also met with the regulator and with the grid companies because they too have a role in making sure that we overcome the grid hurdles, which are probably the key reason that we have not seen the scale of community renewable energy projects that we want to see.

See this speech in context