Seanad debates

Wednesday, 1 October 2025

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

2:00 am

Shane Curley (Fianna Fail)

Ba mhaith liom ceist na slándal fuinnimh a ardú. I wish to raise the issue of energy security and securing the national grid with enough electricity supply. A local solar energy company in Loughrea raised with me the issue of VAT on solar panel batteries. If we take an instance where somebody gets the grant to install their solar panels, there is a once-off opportunity to get the 0% VAT. If that leads to the person wanting to reinstall a battery at a later date, they have to pay the full rate of VAT. We are missing an opportunity here to incentivise people to bring long-duration battery storage capacity into their homes. These take a huge drain off the national grid and allow for people to be more energy secure in their own homes without having to rely on the national supply. It is a no-brainer that we should go about making sure that on a second occasion people can avail of 0% VAT as an incentive to bring in battery storage, if they cannot afford to do everything in one go when they initially install the panels. This initiative would really bear fruit.

I also suggest that we have a discussion with the Minister on the idea of a nominal fee for solar panel installers. The reason I raise that is we do not have enough inspectors going around from site to site, making sure that the work is done to an adequate standard. This would allow for increased funding to hire more inspectors, who are very hard to get into the job, and make it a more attractive career.

Finally, there are no grants for batteries. We have a grant for the solar panels, but there is no grant to put the battery with it so that we actually store battery supply in our own homes that we can call on when we need it and stop the reliance on the national grid. These are small initiatives. Obviously, there would be a cost to the State in the short term but the long-term gain is huge. It is a strategic move that would really bear fruit if we look into it and have a discussion rather than a debate on the matter, as I think we are all on the same page here. I do not think anyone is opposing this but we should have a discussion with the Minister on this if we can.

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