In this Chamber on Tuesday night, I asked the Minister for agriculture a question and he confirmed that farmers cannot put excess solar energy back onto the grid. These are the farmers who access the solar capital investment scheme. The Tánaiste or I can put panels on our roofs and we can feed excess energy back into the grid. Farmers cannot do that. It is fundamentally unfair. There are 130,000-plus farms in the country. Many of those buildings can take solar panels. Why can we not encourage farmers to do that and put energy back onto the national grid? I understand from the Minister that it is a question of EU state aid, which sounds ludicrous to me. I do not even see the angle for state aid. I ask the Tánaiste to use his good offices in trade and foreign affairs to progress that at European level.

I thank Deputy Ó Muirí very much for raising this issue. He is right; the rationale, for better or worse, is around state aid rules. They are intended to ensure that subsidies provided by member states operate in accordance with the same basic rule book and, in the context, grants provided under the Common Agricultural Policy are intended to support farming activity. There is a view as to whether this ends up being a double investment. If we come up from the weeds, though, the broader point the Deputy is making is right. There is a climate emergency - of that there is no doubt - and we need to be coming forward with practical ways to help people, particularly farmers, who are well up for this by the way, to make a positive difference. I will certainly engage with my colleague, the Minister for agriculture, and more broadly with European colleagues on this issue.