The Irish Times

The new Greener Homes grant gives money towards the cost of installing renewable energy in the home. Sounds attractive, but what's it like living with an alternative heating system? Does the fire still dance? Can you shower whenever you want? Will John Rocha be designing solar panels any time soon? And does it break the bank to heat your home? We've come a long way since John Hinde's iconic postcard of Ireland, depicting the redheaded children and the donkey laden with peat. To be sure, the image was deliberately folksy, but less than half a century ago, when Hinde photographed the donkey, its cargo - along with coal - as the preferred way of heating most of Ireland's homes. Since then, Ireland has prospered mightily, and ditched the donkey and the baskets of peat in favour of oil and gas central heating. Our young people came in from the bog, to the glow of the computer and television, and became fat and warm in their machinewashed, tumble-dried T-shirts. But after just a few short decades of bliss and plenty, we find ourselves in an embarrassing and ignoble position. Ireland is now the seventh most oil-dependent economy in the world and the fifth-highest producer of greenhouse gases per capita. And, as far as reducing our use of fossil fuels goes, we come bottom of the class, being the slowest in the European Union to change.