Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept the Minister of State's answer. As I said in my initial summation of the issue, the Department at least needs to put the question to Europe. A lot of money is available and is being expended. Neither the State nor the European Union is getting full value for it. The terms and conditions of the scheme stipulate that farmers cannot supply energy to any organisation outside their holding. Those requirements were probably penned long before the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and before many of the problems we have today arose. The matter needs to be revisited and we need to be to the fore in asking if it can be reconsidered in the European Union.

Everybody here thinks of dairy farms which have high consumption. Some beef farms have considerable roof space. Those farmers are not milking cows or weaning. They are using little or no power and have massive potential to provide energy to the grid or to their local community in some way. We keep talking around these issues. There are solutions and we do not seem to be prepared to grasp the nettle. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine should be banging on the door, as it were, in Brussels to find out if this can be changed given our new circumstances on the back of the illegal war and the energy crisis we face.