Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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This matter does not relate to the Minister of State’s Department but I hope she will have answers for me. I thank her for being here.

This is to do with community energy. Two community energy projects are in jeopardy now, in Galway and Mayo. It is fantastic that we have community energy for the first time but it does not work if there are State bodies, such as ESB Networks, holding projects up and actually could in fact be the cause of these projects not being able to go ahead.

The two community-owned solar projects in question are the Barnaderg solar project in County Galway and the Claremorris solar project in County Mayo, for 4 MW and 5 MW. They were successful in the first renewable energy support scheme, RESS, auction two years ago and it was the first ever community category for renewable energy projects in Ireland. It was heralded as a huge success at the time and we pushed very hard to have it. It was celebrated by the whole Government. The renewable energy community sees it as an important step in transforming communities.

There are seven milestones. They have both reached their first six milestones and their seventh is due to be reached by 31 December this year. There has been no communication from ESB Networks as to whether they will be able to do this, but it seems it is in significant jeopardy at the moment. They have gone through the planning permission and the grid connection agreements. They funded the grid connection agreements themselves and I will come back to that. For the two projects, that comes close to €1 million, and the projects have been in development for five to seven years. The final milestone under the RESS contract must be reached by the end of this year. For this contract, to sell their electricity to the grid in Ireland, it is required that they achieve commercial operation by 31 December. What that actually means is ESB Networks building out the grid in order to achieve that. They have no control over it whatsoever. When we look at the difference between a community operation and a commercial one, we see that commercial operations can build projects and leave them sitting idle. However, these projects accumulated significant debt in order to get to this point, so they are reliant on this contract from the State in order to make it a successful project. They are paying back the debt at the moment - or certainly will be once they reach that point - and they just do not have that kind of financial flexibility.

I ask the Minister of State to respond with an explanation of what the delay is. I also ask the Government to intervene and reconsider that final deadline of 31 December, which was included in RESS auction 1, because of the huge constraint for these community groups. In addition, community groups all over the country are looking at what is happening with regard to RESS 1 and they are making decisions on whether to go into solar energy or not. Therefore, this is about these two projects but also so much more at this stage. We are asking communities to step up to the mark and be part of the transition. In Galway, Mayo and other parts of the country, they are doing that, and semi-State bodies are interfering with their ability to achieve it.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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As already outlined, we need these projects to go ahead as soon as possible in light of the debt and financial issues associated with their not proceeding in a timely manner. One of the issues I have is that there is an enabling grant of up to €180,000 per project through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. No community project of which I am aware is in receipt of that enabling grant. Therefore, we have situation where they were effectively promised something under a two-year timeline, and, through no fault of their own, ESB Networks is not fulfilling its end of the bargain. However, it is the community energy projects that are facing financial difficulty. When we talk about future schemes, the Minister of State mentioned that people and these community projects will know in advance. There was knowledge in advance of how the project would work, and they invested on the basis of the terms and conditions of RESS 1. We cannot talk about future schemes for these projects because those involved have already invested heavily. The projects that were successful under RESS 2 are now actively being chased for money by ESB Networks to pay their grid connections. They will go into debt immediately once they start paying that, as they are doing.

With respect, I would like a response on these two projects and on those that were successful under RESS 2 in order that I might see what the workaround is for those projects rather than speaking about future projects. Conversations are happening right now among community energy providers in the context of whether they going to sign up and pay over money to ESB Networks. If they do not know that the project is finally going to get the connection, why would they hand over the money? This is an urgent issue. We cannot wait any longer. The deadline is 31 December. I ask the Minister of State to go back to the Minister and ask for something satisfactory regarding to these projects.