Monaghan County Council
How do we know this information?
Monaghan replied to our FoI and AIE requests in a prompt and professional manner. We had to go back with some queries.
Summary
Monaghan like most Councils in Ireland has no plan for the energy transition. But it was one of the few than had an energy savings plan.
On-site Renewables Monaghan County Council had no renewable energy installed on its premises to save money.
Own Investments Monaghan had no PV / wind farms of its own to generate cash to support front line services common in English County Councils. See West Suffolk
Efficiency Plan Monaghan had an energy efficiency campaign but they have no system to record cumulative annualised savings like their neighbours Louth and Cavan – which are able to justify further money-saving investments as they are both have annualised savings more than €300,000pa.
They could only estimate the 2021 years savings of 373,025kwh of electricity ~ €36,000pa. We will follow this up in our 2022/23 follow-up to each Council.
Rates Windfarms along with rates from the National Grid provided nearly 15% of Monaghan’s rates, but is very unlikely that their senior management or finance teams know this. The figure is probably higher as there are issues with Council finance systems in the Republic which do not have ‘codes’ allowing them to ‘see’ data for renewables.
As a result, Monaghan’s Management and Councillors are probably not aware of the potential benefits to their ratepayers from localising renewable given the six fold expansion of rates for renewables expected over the next 15 years. See link to how N.I. councils can ‘see’ all types of renewables.
While there are no plans to fix the coding issues, see Donegal Council for solution.
Monaghan did not know what the National Grid contributed in rates but we found it to be €1,200,332 plus €353,706pa for fossil fuel or gas plant. See our research on this here Tailte centrally calculated values.
Organised Plan The Council appears to have no plans to maximise the financial benefits to itself of the energy transition. The Council is likely unaware of the upcoming expansion of rates along with ‘green energy jobs’ forecasted to grow to 125,000 in the South and by 42,000 in the North by 2030. Energy will be the biggest percentage of most Councils rates by 2030. But only for those who plan ahead or get lucky like hapless Leitrim.
See the breakdown summary of the Council here:
| Annual € | |
| Rates Income from Renewable Energy Projects | € 500,816 |
| Income from Council’s own renewable energy | nil |
| Cumulative annualised savings from energy savings campaign | € 36,000 in one year (They do not record cumulative total so ability to justify future investment is impaired) |
| Savings from the electrification of Council’s vehicle fleet | nil |
| Rates Income from fossil fuel plants and gas networks | €353,706pa |
| Rates Income from grid infrastructure and related plant | €1,200,332 |
| Total | € 2.1 million pa |
Council’s Reply
We are currently crafting a request for the 22/23 Financial Year aimed at investigating their preparedness for the energy transition. It will be backed by professional Legal and Accounting advice and will be far more comprehensive. We have learnt a lot from this last exercise.
We will be using the European Directive on Environmental information. This mandates European public bodies to provide all environmental related information to be published to a fulsome extent, at no extra cost.
We will be going back to Monaghan with this new template. We will be publishing both the request and the answer from Council. We will be letting the Council know that their response will be published.
A PDF of the Council’s EU Directive response will be here soon.