I am taking this question in the name of Deputy James O'Connor.

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I thank the Minister. I am aware of the scheme he outlined and the number of farmers who have availed of it. It is a very good scheme. The designation of land, land use policy and so on is really a matter for the Minister for local government, but one of the reasons Deputy O'Connor raised this matter with the Minister for agriculture is its potential impact on farming, particularly the dairy sector in the part of the world the Deputy and I represent. We are seeing large solar farm proposals now in the absence of any guidelines or any instruction from the Government. The Minister has said it is in the programme for Government that we will be bringing forward guidelines. They cannot come soon enough. There is concern that some communities are being swamped by these. Nobody here is saying we do not need solar farms. They are indisputably part of what we need to do in generating energy for the future. However, the nature of the developments is erratic and concerns are being expressed by communities, particularly in my own parish of Knockraha into James O’Connor's area of Leamlara and Lisgoold. There are multiple applications. These farms are transforming the landscape from largely agricultural to what we would argue is a commercial enterprise.

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The Minister is restrained in what he can say. He is the Minister for agriculture, not energy and communications. I take his point about solar that the Department is providing for rooftops. That scheme is very much welcome. However, we are seeing the landscape transforming in front of our eyes. I took my kids for a walk in Leamlara in east Cork a couple of months back and as far as the eye could see, there was panel after panel in what was probably the most productive land in the country. That is the concern we are expressing. We are not saying we are against solar farms; we are clearly not. They are as necessary as wind energy. A large, industrial biodigester was built in my area of Little Island a numbers years ago. Nobody objected to it. The community was actually in favour of the proposal and supported it because it was necessary infrastructure. However, we are expressing the community's genuine concerns about hundreds of thousands of acres. The Minister’s concern should be about the knock-on effects on the agricultural and food sectors. There is a scoping exercise and there will be a public consultation on the guidelines, but we are all here long enough, so let us be honest about it - that will take two or three years. Meanwhile, there will be dozens more of these applications with essentially no guidelines in place. That is the most concerning thing for us.

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