Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Minister of State, Deputy Burke, as teacht isteach inniu. It is good to see him in the House to take this Committee Stage. This is a very important Bill. Even though it is quite a short Bill, it is very important. As the Green Party spokesperson on rural development and as somebody who has worked with schools for 14 years trying to help them to be greener, this day has been a long time coming. I look forward to hearing about the progress that the Minister of State has for us on this Bill, and when we can see it come to fruition. The Green Party has been fighting for this for an awful long time. It is really good to see the Bill reach Committee Stage. It is definitely now time to dot the i's and cross the t's and bring it home.

The Bill will specifically allow people to be exempt from planning permission for solar panel installation, which will extend to public buildings and schools. It removes the restriction that limits the area of solar panels allowed on a roof to 50%. This means that a solar installation of almost any size could be installed on a building. It increases the allowable size of a freestanding, ground-mounted area up to 100 m², from 25 m², and it increases the allowable height from ground level of freestanding solar arrays from 2 m to 4 m. This is a no-brainer for our country. We have a climate emergency and we have huge increases in electricity bills. This needs to happen yesterday.

There are 137,500 farms in the country, the majority of which have at least one shed roof suitable for solar. Our family farm at home has photovoltaic tiles on the shed roof. One young farmer raised an issue with me recently when I met with Macra na Feirme representatives. He was thought that they might be too heavy for sheds, and that a farmer might need to build a special shed. In case people are worried about that, the technology has come a long way. First, it has reduced in price by approximately 90% over the past ten years. Photovoltaic panels are lighter than ever before, and they can be bolted on within a couple of hours. I have seen this done first-hand. For the farmers of Ireland, for the schools of Ireland, for the community halls all over the country, the 4,000 schools and 2 million homes, this needs to happen as soon as possible.

I believe that the Minister of State has progressed the legislation and I really look forward to him proceeding with it. Not only will it enable people to create their own energy, the dairy farmers have huge electricity bills running the dairy and milking machines. This really has to be prioritised within the Department, so that we can see this pushed ahead now and not delayed any further. We introduced this on First Stage almost one year ago. We thought that would be it and that we were nearly there. People were harassing us and asking where the Bill was that we promised them. It looks like we have not been pushing for it but we have been shouting about it for ages. We have it in the programme for Government, we have committed to it as a coalition, and we said that we would conclude the review of the current planning exemptions related to solar panels. We said that we would expand and incentivise microgeneration, including rooftop solar energy, and we said that we would develop a solar energy strategy for rooftop and ground-based photovoltaics. Photovoltaic solar panels are the newest form of solar panels we have. Some people used to have a water solar heaters, whereby one had columns of water in the solar panel which were heated by the sun. This photovoltaic technology is a game changer because it makes electricity and does not actually need lots of sunshine. It just needs daylight. It is very important that we put the power and the energy back into the people's hands at grassroots level who want to do their bit and reduce their bills. God knows farmers are struggling enough at the moment with all of the rising costs, including for diesel and nitrates.

While I recognise that the Minister of State has lots of priorities, I urge him to do his level best to prioritise this Bill and move it forward. I thank my colleague, Senator Pauline O'Reilly, for her work on this, and the members of the Department who have worked hard on this. I believe that we are ready to go and I really hope we can do this. I have had several meetings with the Irish Farmers' Association, which would also like to see this progress.