I acknowledge Deputy Stanley for bringing forward this Bill. It is constructive legislation that seeks to strike a balance. As other Members stated, delivering clean, renewable energy will ensure fairness. As I was sitting here, I heard a Deputy say that the regional Independents are against renewable energy. I was in negotiations for Government. We secured key steps for private wires and renewable developments relating to data centres. As a qualified engineer with a master's degree in sustainability, while we were in negotiations, I pushed for this. In the context of people saying that the regional Independents are against this , when I was at a committee meeting I heard a member of one party state that residents are worried about boiling their kettles. If you do the calculations, you will find that it costs five cent to boil a kettle. I am not here for sound bites; I am here for actual engineering being put down. Wind energy must be part of our future, that is clear. In that context, however, local communities cannot be an afterthought. I commend Deputy Stanley on bringing this Bill forward. With regard to onshore and offshore wind, it is a strategic choice. It is very important that the public know the difference in size of offshore and onshore wind farms. It is colossal. In the context of onshore generation, as other Deputies have said, turbines can be 165 m in height Offshore turbines can be 260 m high. The efficiency is what we should be focusing on. Onshore is, on average, 2.5 MW while offshore can get up to 12 MW, which is huge for Ireland in the context of energy generation. If any other country had the capability Ireland has, it would be seizing upon it. If this was Germany, this would have been done years ago. When I looked back through the Dáil records, I discovered that we had plans for this before the crash. Sadly, the economic crash happened and we were left on the back foot. We did not set up a national fund like other countries, such as Denmark or Norway, built on the basis of publicly owned success stories that create wealth. We are now reliant on foreign direct investment. We cannot change the past, but we can change legislation to make onshore and offshore benefit the Irish people as much as possible. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. I am on the climate and energy committee. We have had many groups in. I feel like a broken record talking about this because everyone agrees with regard to what we should do in the context of long-duration energy storage, creating a grid that is decentralised and protecting from curtailment and dispatch down. When you hear stories to the effect that €2.7 million worth of electricity is being lost every day due to dispatch down and our grid not being able to carry the load, it is absolutely heartbreaking. When I knock on doors in my constituency and talk to young mothers and parents who are struggling with the cost of electricity, I come to the conclusion that it makes no sense that we have the second or third highest energy cost per kilowatt hour in Europe when we have the capability of generating so much energy on our little island. Deputy Fleming mentioned the sale of energy to France. Solar farms and wind energy facilities - and I have heard other Deputies mention this - are turning off their renewable projects because the grid cannot take the energy. When representatives from EnergyCloud came before the energy committee, they proposed that this wasted energy be used to heat up boilers and be given to areas affected by disadvantage and socioeconomic difficulties. That is something we need to push for, because wasting this energy is absolutely ridiculous. One of the things I mentioned securing in the context of the programme for Government was private wire legislation. Germany has done it, Denmark has done it and the UK has done it. We clearly do not have the capacity to reach what the grid demands. We need to allow private wire legislation to be fast-tracked. I welcome the work the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and his Department have been doing on this. I look forward to the legislation coming before the House in the new year. What I would focus on when it comes to private wires are quasi-local projects and eco-villages that could benefit from offshore renewable energy. Deputy Stanley has made provision in his Bill for community benefit, community ownership and a fair share. This is one of the most important parts of the Bill, and I commend the Deputy on it. As I was reading it, I was very impressed with provision relating to the purchase of 10% of projects. Trust is built, not by ignoring people but by sharing benefits. As I have always said, if you put out a contract to the public and stick by it, they will not break that contract. The public needs to know that this Bill is not about blocking wind energy - far from it. The Bill would create the conditions for sustainable growth and community partnerships. Climate change demands action, but climate action must be taken in conjunction with people. We saw how people reacted when the previous Government brought in stuff without listening to them. An entire party was decimated. We cannot allow that to happen with the current parties and Independents here. We need to listen to the Irish people, conduct surveys and have community engagement. This is about fairness, planning and sense. It is also about ensuring Ireland leads. We did not lead when it came to our oil and gas. We now have a potential with our offshore renewable energy to use the curtailment to make green hydrogen, sell it to the growing market and make it benefit the Irish people. I will say this again, if any other country had this potential, it would have been done 20 years ago. I look forward to this Bill progressing and I look forward to working with colleagues to refine it further.

Sentiment score: 0.20