Tá Ceist Uimh. 6, in ainm an Teachta Willie O'Dea á thogáil ag an Teachta Séamus McGrath.

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Tá Ceist Uimh. 7, in ainm an Teachta Peter 'Chap' Cleere, á thogáil arís ag an Teachta Séamus McGrath.

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On the Minister's last point, we have approached Cork County Council collectively at a local level and it is saying that without national guidelines, it will not amend its development plan in terms of governing regulations around the erection of solar farms. There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. The council is saying it will not implement anything about solar development in its development plan. The Minister is saying this evening that it is up to the council to incorporate that into its development plan. The council has already told us locally it is not open to amending it without direction nationally. I support the point made by Deputy O'Connor. On some of the land he is talking about, with which I share a border, somebody could build a solar farm 100, 200 or 300 acres in size but would struggle to get planning permission for a one-off house or agricultural shed. It is that stark in terms of the development that can and cannot happen there. At this stage, we need to be genuine with people. In the absence of regulation and guidelines, we must stop fooling people. I welcome that there will a scoping exercise but it sounds like it will take an awfully long time. We need to implement guidelines urgently.

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I support Deputy Dolan as well. I spoke about solar guidelines previously. It has to be said again that is taking an extreme amount of time to get these guidelines updated. I am here since 2020. I have spoken about this a dozen times at this stage. We have been led to believe that these guidelines are being updated or imminent. The Minister is giving us an update on the progress in relation to that. As I said, it seems to take an extreme amount of time. They are much anticipated and long awaited. Whether it is solar or wind, the only conclusion I can draw is that we seem to be putting things on the long burner. The only conclusion I can draw is that is being done by design by the Department to allow a number of applications. I am surprised to hear there are that many applications in one part of Galway. I thought that we had a heavy number of applications in my part of the country, but nothing comparable to Deputy Dolan's. We seem to do things very slowly. They seem to take an awful long time. I met the industry a number of weeks ago in relation to this. The industry wants these guidelines updated because it wants people to be aware of what is happening and it wants it done transparently. I echo the calls of Deputy Dolan to get this done urgently.

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