Senator John McGahon - speech from 24 May 2023

Leader, one of the things I want to talk about is renewable energy today and some of the tax benefits that we can initialise with renewable energy to encourage more and more people, particularly people in our farming community, to do that. And one of the issues in which I wanted to highlight about that was, it's something I've actually raised in the Senate before, and it's about the abolishment of the 50% rule whereby no more than 50% of any holding can be made available for solar farming without the entire holding losing the agricultural status to qualify for agricultural relief. So if we were to remove that, so essentially what that means is if I have a field, and if I'm to put solar energy on more than 51% of that field, it then loses its agricultural value, it loses agricultural relief. So there's no incentive for somebody to put solar energy on more than 50% of a particular field, and that can be initiated by a quick change in the Finance Bill towards the end of the year. And if that was initiated, I think that would go a really long way to encouraging more people to get into solar farming and be able to increase the level of solar farming that we have. So that's just one example of, I think, some of the ways that we need to go about it. And really what it is, is it's about introducing as many incentives as possible, perhaps through tax breaks, that I think we can really encourage a drive into renewable energy. Because Ireland really has the ability by the end of this decade, and a little bit past, to be a renewable energy powerhouse, and not just for our country, but for the European Union, where we'll be able to sell access energy back into our European colleagues. So small tax breaks like that would go a long way to encouraging people and incentivising people to get into solar farming, and I would appreciate your view or debate on it at some stage in the future. Thank you.