asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy if he will make grant aid available for the installation of wind, water and solar power apparatuses, as a means of providing electricity or supplementing supply from the electricity board grid.

At present grants are not available for the installation of wind, water and solar power apparatus as a means of providing electricity but the use of such sources of energy is at present the subject of research by national and international agencies. Until well established systems for the exploitation of these renewable sources of energy are available, it would not be practicable to introduce a grants scheme.

The Minister must be aware of the initiative of private individuals throughout the State. They are quite numerous. Their own experiments have generated electricity. Will the Minister grant-aid these people?

The Minister has just answered that question.

The number of people who have done this is very small. Naturally I would seek to encourage them as much as possible but it is much more feasible and sensible that the development of this kind of technology should be brought at least to a reasonable level before any question of an across-the-board grant system would be considered. At the moment this type of technology is extremely expensive and not very economic. A good deal of work is being done by both national and international agencies as a matter of urgency in the light of present circumstances into the development and perfection of this technology. It has a long way to go. The National Board for Science and Technology are prepared to grant-aid new projects which demonstrate technology new to this country. They are really only prepared to do that in relation not to individual households obviously but in relation to efforts to develop these technologies in academic or equivalent circumstances where the benefit of the knowledge can be applied to the country as a whole.

If the Minister suggests that the technology is so underdeveloped, how does that relate to the proposal in the United States to provide a 2,000 dollars tax credit to householders who will install such equipment in their houses? Surely at this stage that development could be made available here.

I would ask the Deputy to bear in mind that Ireland and the United States are two very different places and that a state like Arizona, for example, which has sunshine, I suppose, on average 90 per cent of daylight time during winter and summer is in a totally different position for the use of solar panels from a country which has sunshine—I do not know what the proportion here is—for perhaps 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the time.

There are cold and wet parts of the United States.

The generating of electricity is pretty basic. I am not a technician and I am not fully conversant with it. The principles of it are pretty basic. There are many people with bright ideas as to how they can generate electricity with wind, water or solar power. I have seen examples of this. Is the Minister telling me that, until the commission report, simple methods of generating electricity in households would not be a contribution toward saving energy and imported oil? These people should be encouraged. Would the Minister re-examine what he has said, and go back to the idea of wind chargers and solar power?

Question No. 20.

I am asking the Minister——

The Deputy is creating an argument. These questions have all been gone into.

I am trying to create a certain amount of electricity.

The Deputy is not generating a good impression.

In view of the fact that other European countries make grants available—and it is not so long since grants were available——

Question No. 20.

——would the Minister sympathetically consider the whole project?

As I have pointed out to the Deputy already—and I have nothing to add to what I have already said—it would be quite wasteful of public funds to give grants to encourage people to do research—because essentially that is what it is—or to generate electricity at a cost which is often ten times or 20 times what the normal cost is.

To develop it.

Until such time as the cost factors can be brought down and these new technological systems can be made economic and attractive, it would not be in the public interest to give people grants for the installation of things like this at this time. The proper way to go about it is to have the proper institutes here trying to develop aspects of solar power and other forms of power which are particularly suitable for us and which would be economic in ordinary use. As I have said, the NBST who have responsibility for the development of this kind of technology are willing to give grants in suitable cases for such work.