As it is the first time I have addressed the House since the passing of my best friend and the person who got me involved in politics, I hope the House will allow me to say of Ellie: ar dheis Dé go raibh h-anam. Of the woman who wanted to get on the boat when I went to Palestine even though she had stage 4 cancer, I want to say: Ellie, thank you for believing in me and getting me into this House. I will keep you close to my heart. Condolences to Justin, Sean, DJ, Richard and Kate. I appreciate that leeway from the Minister. The reality is that Ireland remains too exposed. Yesterday, the Taoiseach was in the White House. I commend him for diplomatically saying about Churchill that Ireland had a different perspective in regard to its own War of Independence and that Churchill had created a bit of difficulty for us. During the Second World War, Churchill reduced the supply of coal to Ireland to try to force de Valera’s hand to end our neutrality. That is what we do when we do not allow our country to have its own energy independence and security. Speaking of LNG, when I was in the committee, I asked why we were doing this. They said it added to our energy security. Surely if there was – and please God, there never will be – a foreign power that wanted to attack the gas or energy supply to our country, adding one single other point of failure would not add to energy security or independence. Surely adding multiple long-duration energy storage green hydrogen gravity pumps, with the private wires Bill I am looking forward to working with the Minister on, would be a much better way. The cost of the LNG terminal is extortionate and it needs to be put in a cost-benefit analysis to compare what we would get benefit-wise if we instead invested in our grid or long-duration energy storage battery packs and everything like that. They are moving too fast and the solutions are not there. I am blue in the face saying in this Chamber that we have to enable private wires to connect renewable energies, invest in long-duration energy storage and accelerate other storage systems like green hydrogen, particularly alongside offshore renewable energy. We cannot have curtailment and dispatch down.

Sentiment score: 0.24