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

As I understand it, EnergyCloud works by offering people who are on low incomes the chance to have a hot tank of water overnight, and that is done through energy that otherwise would have been thrown away and wasted. I understand this has been a successful experiment. I was asked about it before it started a couple of years ago and I understand that since it has been running it has been working well. It is for that reason that it is part of the energy poverty action strategy, which is in consultation at the moment. I urge the Deputy to make a submission on that and say whether he thinks it should be continued or changed in any way.

Part of the response to this is how we will make sure we are not wasting energy by having sufficient grid and sufficient connections to the rest of the world. At the moment, our electricity connections are only to the UK through Northern Ireland. We are strengthening our connection to Northern Ireland, and we are also building a new connection to France. We are in discussions with Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.

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