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

There is a very simple answer to the question of whether I support the EnergyCloud system that takes energy that otherwise would have been thrown away and gives it to them to heat their water at night. Yes, I absolutely do. It has been a very successful experiment and I want to see it continuing. If we are going to continue with this kind of system, people need somewhere to store the energy in their home. A tank of water is one way of doing that, and a battery on the wall is another. An electric car is another option.

Over the last two years, energy credits were only a part of a much larger system of trying to give people money to make it possible for them to get through the winter without being cold. In other words, we subsidised the increased cost of electricity over the last two years. We spent €2.2 billion over the last two winters putting money directly into people’s accounts. I would much prefer if we needed to target payments in the future that we could provide electricity to people to store directly in their homes, particularly from sources that were cheap or that would otherwise be thrown away. I think we could have devised a much better system for the future and working on this would be well worth it. It would pay for itself. I look forward to its success in the future.

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