Ireland's energy system is a mess at the moment. We have the highest domestic electricity prices in the whole European Union. We are enormously exposed to shocks. Our grid is falling apart at the moment. It is not able to handle the electricity that is coming onto the system at all. It has happened as a result, in large part, of an absence of investment since the crash. We have had infrastructure capital depreciation at an enormous rate, which has not been filled with investment, as a result, in large part, of the Minister's Government. We need gas storage in Ireland. Ireland is the only country in the European Union without a gas storage facility. That leaves us significantly exposed to changes in the supply of gas and the price of gas too. This came to light in its most severe manner during the onset of the Ukraine war, when the supply of gas through most of Europe collapsed. We saw a massive increase in the cost of gas. This crisis continues today, with the war in Iran, a situation whereby a quick change in the Strait of Hormuz has had knock-on effects on the price of gas in this country. These are not aberrations. We are living in an unstable world and the locations of the production of gas are often the most unstable on the planet. Obviously gas is really important in the pricing and supply of electricity, because we have a system in this country, the Government's system, whereby we have marginal pricing when it comes electricity. That means the price of electricity is dependent on the last unit of electricity that is produced. In this country, it is typically produced by gas. This dependency is not going anywhere soon, for a number of reasons. One is the slow increase in renewable energy, and another is that the Government is significantly increasing demand because it is lamping on serious numbers of data centres. At the moment, about 24% of all electricity consumed in the State is being consumed by data centres, an outlier in Europe, where typically 4% to 5% of electricity in other countries is consumed by data centres. This means, no matter how much sustainable energy that we push onto the system, we are never going to reach the end because gas will always be necessary because the Government is increasing the demand for gas at a serious rate. Gas will play a role in the production of electricity for a long time to come. Even if that were not the case, we have a system that is highly unstable if we rely just upon renewable energy. There are many days when there is no wind or sun. You will always need a backup of gas-produced electricity. There is no doubt that we need a gas storage system in this country. I want to talk about the infrastructure for a start. The infrastructure in this country is so poor it is incredible. We have bottlenecks and constraints, and it is leading to a significant dispatch down in terms of electricity providers. We are actually paying wind turbine companies to stop producing electricity at certain times because it cannot be accepted onto the system. Of course, that is an extra price for the end user. Then we are paying for the backup of the gas systems to come on as well during that particular time. We have a strange system now whereby every extra wind turbine that we add onto the system has a diminishing return in terms of value to the system. I am not saying that they do not have a value or that it is not beneficial, but each extra turbine is less beneficial because the system is not able to allow for those turbines to come along. I am old enough the remember the oceans of bumf that used to come from the Government that used to say that Ireland would be the Saudi Arabia of sustainable energy development. The Minister of State must remember that himself. There used to be brochures upon brochures telling people that we were going to become net exporters in terms of electricity. What has actually happened? The opposite. We are significant net importers of electricity. That is going to increase. The more connections we plug in to the rest of Europe, the more electricity that we will import. One of the reasons for this is Government incompetence and Government lack of investment. I will give the House an example of Government incompetence. Over the last 15 years, the Government has had five international conferences on offshore wind energy. The Government has paid for five conferences and invited Ministers from all around the world and experts in companies to those five conferences on offshore wind energy. On the other side of the equation, how many wind turbines do we have offshore? Zero. We have had more conferences on offshore wind turbines in this country than we have offshore wind turbines. You could not make this up. If you were to create a comedy show to lampoon the Government's incapability to deliver energy, you would not have the creativity to contrast those two elements in the manner that they are there. There is such a problem in relation to this. This issue is getting worse. There are no offshore wind turbines at the moment. Many of the companies currently engaging in the system to become wind energy companies are actually disengaging now as a result. We in Aontú believe we need to build renewable energy in this country. We want to see a far bigger element of the electricity production come from renewables. We want to see this country become energy secure. We talk a lot in this Chamber about food security. Energy security is as important as food security in this country. The more dependent we are on other countries, the more insecure we are. We believe that we need more microgeneration. More homes need to become self-sufficient in electricity. We need more rooftop production of electricity. The way to do that is to make sure that those solar systems are accessible to everybody. They are not accessible to everybody because the grants that are available are still far too small for low-income and middle-income families. We want to see more farmers get involved. Energy should be seen as a crop for farmers to be able to make a living from. Far more use should be made of sheds, land and biodigestion. I went to the headquarters of the Belgium electricity provider a number of years ago. We were looking at the grid system. They were looking at the grid and seeing a reduction in the grid over a number of years. I asked why the grid was reducing. They said that electricity would be locally generated in the future, that we are not going to have the necessity for the massive grids to transport electricity across the country and far more electricity will be microgenerated and locally generated. Another aspect of this is a spatial element. A lot of the wind generation is happening in locations where the industry is not and, as a result, that creates the bottlenecks and difficulties getting the electricity to these locations. We should be developing industry into the areas where the electricity is coming from. It is very similar to the whole debate on taking water from the Parteen Basin to send to Dublin and add more of a population to Dublin rather than adding the population to Limerick, and, as a result, not having to move that resource so far in that area. We want to see a healthy environment. We believe in a biodiverse environment. We want to see this country grow strongly in making sure that we have a healthier environment. We also need to make sure that there is human balance in that discussion. There are European laws, such as the habitats directive, which make it difficult for human beings to live in certain parts of the country. The big problem in Enniscorthy at the moment is the floods. I love the pearl mussel. I want to see the pearl mussel to do well. Unfortunately, the pearl mussel is located right in the middle of Enniscorthy, which stops the building of these flood defences. As a result, Enniscorthy has flooded for the last 25 years. Midleton flood defences have waited 14 years for a planning application to be put in. One of the issues here is we have to have a realisation that human beings also share these locations. Laws that come from Europe, such as the habitats directive, need to take that into consideration too. We also need to realise that one of the problems we have in energy production in Ireland is that we have the slowest planning, tendering, procurement, licensing and judicial reviews in the whole European Union. All of these tools necessary for the production of infrastructure are slower here than they are in most of the European Union. That is because of this Government's incompetence on those issues. I have problems with this Bill that are important. LNG is likely to be the source of the gas storage. Fracked gas is a major element of LNG. Fracked gas is incredibly damaging for the locations from which it is fracked and it has a far higher emission rate in terms of methane, which is pushed out in the system too. Aontú is against fracked gas in Ireland. It would be hypocritical to support an energy solution that includes fracked gas from other parts of the world. I also believe that there has not been enough examination of the potential impact of the gas terminal on the communities in County Clare and their health. That is important. Local communities must have consent for the production of infrastructure. When I went to Belgium, I asked what the parameters and priorities were to plan for infrastructural projects for their electricity. Second on that list was the idea of community consent. Community consent is nowhere in the aspects of the development in Ireland. That lack of community consent and the lack of ability to achieve that community consent at the start slows down projects. The Minister of State will know that there is a Government plan to build a North-South interconnector for electricity. I was in short trousers when the Government came up with that idea. It is incredible. That project has been going on so long. It has gone through all the hoops and is still no closer to getting built. Why? Farmers along the curtilage of that particular route are refusing to allow the ESB and EirGrid onto their sites. They are not going to let them onto their sites. It is not going to get built as a result. The Government went bull-headed in relation to that particular project and, as a result, slow it down, instead of using the technology that is used between Aachen and Liège in relation to the movement of electricity, which is to underground it. It is really important that community consent is worked out at the start. At the back of all this is the issue of data centres. Data centres are significantly pushing up the price of electricity for individuals. It is causing problems with the energy system being on a knife-edge at all times. We need to stop data centres. They need to pay the same electricity costs as domestic households. That would do two things: it would decrease the price of electricity for domestic householders in Ireland and it would reduce the incentive for data centres to come here. There is a lot in the process that we are yet to look at. We will wait until the committee has looked at the Bill. We probably disagree with many of the Opposition parties in that we believe we do need a gas storage system. Whether this is the gas storage system remains to be seen.

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