An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30
============================================================

Paraic Brady (FG), Agricultural Panel

Senator Craughwell spoke about the taxi service and some companies owning 20 licences or more and hiring them out for €6,000. He also looked for a debate on the ownership of the taxis and why some companies owned 20-plus licences. He spoke about sole traders and the need for a debate regarding sole traders, taxi regulation and taxi services. Certainly, I would welcome a debate on this.
Senator Rabbitte spoke about solar farms. I am delighted that somebody has raised solar farms again. There has been no regulation of solar farms. England has a tiered system from 1 to 5 regarding agricultural land and peat land, with 1 being agricultural land of the highest use and 5 being peat land of the least use. It is not devaluing the land but pointing out that agricultural land has the most value for agriculture and not for generating electricity. Certainly, we should have a debate and look at that in this country. We cannot have vast amounts of good land given over to solar panels. We have seen it in County Longford and the Senator has also spoken about it in Galway. There is certainly a need for regulation of solar panels as well as a debate on funding of community-led initiatives from farmers regarding solar panels. If we got our electricity grid up to standard, the farming community could produce a lot of energy from solar panels on sheds.
I hope I have not missed anybody and if I have, I am very sorry. Senators will forgive me; it is my first day doing this.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30