OUT ON A LIMB: Solar panels are a waste of money.

I was ready to start beating my car with a tree branch by the time the last of them checked out, and we were just left with the solar-panel fitter, booked in for two weeks while he fits panels to a house on a large country estate down the road. He works all day in the driving rain and returns at night drenched and exhausted.

We’ve been in a white-out of squally storms for the past week, and solar guy is unable to explain how his clients will be powering their house off the eye-wateringly expensive equipment he has fitted.

“It all works beautifully,” he announced, coming back in his day-glo work anorak the other day, and sitting down at the kitchen table to a plate of his favorite jumbo sausage rolls.

But when I asked whether that meant the millionaire’s house would be powered by solar, he pulled a face. “I mean the system works, as in I’ve wired it all up correctly,” he said, munching. Then he laughed, as though the next bit was obvious: “But it won’t produce any power without direct sunlight, obviously.” And at that moment the wind howled, and we all stared out the kitchen patio door at the driving rain and the thick soup of a turbulent sky.

The weather comes pounding off the sea here, and while there are sunny days, it’s hard to remember a time when there was a run of them together.

Rain and sun, rain and sun, rain and sun all summer, that’s Ireland. And in the winter, it’s like living in a bowl of mushroom chowder. There are days when you come out the door and you can’t see a few feet in front of you.

But despite the almost permanent lack of direct sunlight, Ireland is mad for solar energy. Incentives galore scream at you from advertising hoardings, and roofs everywhere get clad in shiny panels so they can be pounded by the endless rain.

Well, that’s what they want you to think: