Ireland’s future political leaders have shown their support for solar panels being used on farms.

Farming candidates from each of the main political parties unanimously agreed that farmers should be allowed to choose what they want to do with their own land, while speaking at the Irish Farmers Journal debate last Thursday.

However, Fine Gael’s Martin Heydon said that there needs to be changes around planning regulations for larger scale solar farms and Independent Ireland’s Eddie Punch said that focus should be put on solar panels on farm sheds and roofs.

Similarly, Sinn Féin’s Martin Kenny said that he disagrees with high-quality farmland being used for such energy production.

“It comes back to the issue of balance. Yes, we need to have solar on our farmland, on some farmland. But on our most productive farmland, we certainly should not.”

Meanwhile, the Green Party’s Pippa Hackett said that there needs to be infrastructural changes to incentivise solar plants on lower quality land.

“This is how we fix it; we get the infrastructure right so that the grid connections are in those areas that farmers have less productive land.” Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue said the situation needs to be managed “very carefully”.