No schools fitted with solar panels a year on from climate announcement
Ahead of last year’s budget, the Government announced it was to pay for solar panels for the country’s 4,000 schools as part of the summer works programme.
Not one school has yet been fitted with solar panels a year on from when the €50m climate action scheme was first announced, the Oireachtas education committee has heard.
The committee met on Tuesday with officials from the school building unit of the Department of Education.
Ahead of last year’s budget, the Government announced it was to pay for solar panels for the country’s 4,000 schools as part of the summer works programme.
The money was to come from the Department of the Environment's Climate Action Fund, with 100% of the costs to schools to be covered.
However, one year on, the project is still stalled, and not one school has been fitted with the panels.
“This is a year later, and not one school has a solar panel on it,” Green Party senator Pauline O’Reilly said.
“As I understand it, there are complicated reasons come up with by the department for why they can't do that.
“Loads of us have solar panels. It's not that complicated. You have people to do the work, you have the money. I fail to see why you just can't get on with the job.
“I know I sound frustrated [but] we're in the middle of a climate emergency, and there's money there. There's people to do the work and it's not being done, so I'm not understanding why not.”
Chair of the committee Fine Gael TD Paul Kehoe said it was “beyond” him that the solar panel scheme cannot be progressed.
“We have thousands of schools across the country, primary force primary, where we could be harvesting energy.
“What is the delay? This has been announced for quite some time by both ministers [Education Minister Norma Foley and Climate Minister Eamon Ryan].
“At the time, both said this would be happening here and now and we're still here, and still nothing happening.”
In response, Hubert Loftus from the Department of Education’s planning and building unit, said funding for the solar panel scheme was coming from the Climate Action fund.
“That creates particular requirements in relation to the strategy around for that and the business case in relation to that.”
The department has “engaged extensively” with the Department of Environment, Communications, and Climate, he added.
“I think we're very much at the concluding state stages of that engagement and there's just a couple of remaining issues to work through.
“It's more at that higher level rather than the individual specifics and just working through some of the strategy issues.”
Working the plan through at an individual school level is fine, Mr Loftus said.
"Working it across 4,000 schools and managing that and managing the process for that [when] our overall approach on this is to keep the process as streamlined and straightforward for individual schools as possible. That's what we are working through."
When complete, the initiative is expected to help schools reduce their energy costs and for the education sector to meet its emissions reduction targets, currently set at a 51% reduction by 2030.
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