I am thankful for the opportunity to respond to the strongly held views of many Opposition Members. There is a bit of divergence between some of them, and I must respect that. People's views are strongly held. We might argue over the detail. What I want to reflect about this Bill that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and I have brought forward is that it is purely about energy security. Maybe we do not all accept it, but a lot of people in this House and in society generally accept that we need to transition away, for a couple of reasons, from our dependence on imported fossil fuels. There are the climate emissions targets. The latter are recognised as an important aspect of this. I must also reflect on what Deputy Healy-Rae has just said. We might have a difference of opinion about how we get there, but I know what he is talking about in terms of the cost of energy. It is my strongly held view and that of the Government that if we bring more renewables onto the grid from our own resources - from wind and solar within our remit - we will reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels. That will ultimately reduce the price and benefit everyone across the country. For those who are looking at it from a different angle in terms of the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and the impact that is having on climate change, I refer to the fact that this is not going to be gas traded into the marketplace. It is a storage facility that will be there in the event of a rupture or a disruption to the supply through the interconnectors from the North Sea via the UK and Scotland. Principally, it is storage. It will be a State-owned and State-controlled facility. It is not a market initiative. It is not an attempt to use LNG as a price lever to compete with the supplies that are already there. It is not aimed at creating a market tension that would reduce prices and, therefore, make us more dependent. It is really just about storage. I understand where Members are coming from, but it does not and will not add one extra element of carbon dioxide emissions. In the event of there being a disruption, it will replace gas that would already have been provided into the market. This is about critical infrastructure and ensuring that our hospitals and other key facilities that are dependent on gas, principally for heat, will be able to remain in operation for whatever length of time it might take to repair the supply line. I also take the points made by Deputies Murphy and Ahern on why this legislation is being rushed through in an emergency way. We are already making significant headway in relation to our plan-led approach to the capture of wind off our shoreline. We had the recent designation through the designated maritime area plan, DMAP, process off the south-east coast. We had a very successful auction. Where other countries that are attempting to capture wind off their shorelines or in their seas have been unable to get bidders, we had three or four bidders for the auction in December. Some 900 MW have been secured. The process is now going through the final permissions aspect. It is working really well. There are three other suitable locations within that overall designated area. They will go to auction soon. There is interest from other companies in this regard. The Government is working really hard. The Minister, Deputy O’Brien, myself and others are in regular contact with the marketplace to encourage investment and to show that Ireland has a long-term plan in place. We are working on a national DMAP or designation of more suitable sites around our coastline that have the capacity to generate up to 15 GW of electricity out to 2040. That is the kind of approach we are taking. I understand the politics of it, but it is unfair to say that we are ignoring the opportunity regarding renewables. In recognising that it is a slow process, we are derisking it for those investors who are going to come in. We are doing the mapping and collecting the data ,and we will be providing it to those entities as part of the auction process. Unlike what happened with the phase 1 projects, which were effectively developer led, we have moved to take control. That work is already done and we are working through it but it would be foolhardy to just say that because we have a plan to capture effectively 20 GW of wind energy, and some additional solar on shore out to 2040, we can somehow ignore the necessity to store gas as we transition away from the use of fossil fuels. I understand what Deputies Ahern and Murphy said about battery storage. It is there but it will not be sufficient in the short term. They also spoke about other liquid fuels. The Department and the Government are working on a hydrogen strategy, so we are working towards identifying other solutions. The ESB recently published a report which effectively said we cannot get to net zero by 2050 by renewables alone. We have to use liquid fuels, and hydrogen would be the obvious one in that regard. That creates huge opportunities, because we will have a quantum of electricity generated from renewables. Generally, the wind blows better at night when demand is less. Rather than grounding or not utilising that electricity, it can effectively be converted to hydrogen or ammonia in a more stable way. There are opportunities for exports as well as storage in that regard. That is the longer term plan. Work is being done on that. I accept that there is an investment in infrastructure, but I do not accept the point that we are locking ourselves in. If we had put this out to the marketplace and asked for outside investment in a market-driven initiative where you would be building hard infrastructure, that accusation would stand up. In this instance, however, I cannot accept it because we are talking about a piece of floating infrastructure. There will be some onshore infrastructure to be built, which will be relatively minor in both overall and cost terms. The big element is the ship and its location. When we get to a point where we do not need that back-up storage and we either have enough batteries in place or are generating enough electricity to be able to look to hydrogen storage, we can move that piece of fossil fuel kit on to another location, dispense with it or sunset it. Another thing I would like to mention in more general terms, because I think will arise in respect of some of the other amendments, is that this Bill is about getting moving really quickly on the permissions that are necessary to get the infrastructure in place. As stated on Second Stage, the operation will be dealt with in another Bill. What the Deputies’ are trying to stitch in here by means of their amendments might be better addressed in the context of that legislation. This Bill is just about permissions. Hopefully, that will give Deputies an understanding of what the Government is doing. We are not in a position to accept the amendments.

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I reiterate that there is very little between our understandings of the negative or harmful impact that gas, whether it be natural gas, LNG or any form of methane, has on our climate and on the environment. As I set out in response to the other amendments, the Government has made it abundantly clear that we have to pivot away from the use of fossil fuels. We are doing so and have a strategy for doing so. It would be foolhardy in the extreme if, while pivoting away, we failed to recognise that we need a backstop of energy security. Deputy O'Gorman, who performed very well in a previous Government, knows that in November 2023 there was recognition that we had to have an energy security component in place for the future. It was accepted at that stage and we are building on that. I refer to Energy Security in Ireland to 2030. All sides of the House are fully in agreement that fossil fuels are damaging and bad and that we have got to wean ourselves off them quickly. We are working very hard to capture renewable energy, whether wind or solar, and we are doing it in a plan-led and strategic way so that we can, from climate change and emissions perspectives, rid ourselves of fossil fuels while also putting in place a means of controlling our own energy mix into the future. The State will control it and it will be within our own ambit, so that we will not be dependent on regimes outside the normal zones of Europe.

Sentiment score: 0.12