2026-06-25

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I am pleased to address the House on Second Stage of the Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill. As Deputies are aware, the main purpose of the Bill is to provide for a project-specific, bespoke consenting pathway for the strategic gas emergency reserve facility to be located at Cahiracon in County Clare. This will enable a development consent application to be submitted later this year, which is critical to achieving accelerated delivery of this project. Before outlining the provisions of the Bill, I would like to speak on a number of key points relating to the development of the legislation. In March 2025, Government approved a State-led strategic gas emergency reserve. This is critical to securing Ireland's energy systems as we continue to transition to indigenous, clean renewable energy. Crucially, the strategic gas emergency reserve will also ensure Ireland's compliance with EU standards and regulation. A strategic gas emergency reserve is a State-owned gas storage facility that will provide the resilience required to support our energy transition. This State-led strategic reserve will store LNG for use only in the event of a disruption to gas supplies to protect Ireland's citizens, economy and reputation from the possibility of energy curtailments. It is not intended for commercial use and will not act as a new entry point for gas into the system. The final design will be scoped to provide sufficient supply to protect household and business customers in the event of a major disruption to subsea gas pipelines. Gas Networks Ireland will ensure appropriate contractual arrangements are in place to refill the floating storage and regassification unit throughout an emergency situation to provide consistent gas supplies via the floating storage and regassification unit for the duration required. The introduction of bespoke legislation was agreed following advice from the Office of the Attorney General's to reduce the uncertainty of the timelines regarding planning decisions and to facilitate the request from Government to expedite delivery of the project. The ongoing phased commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 at this time prevents the project benefiting from the required expedited decision timeframe to deliver this project. The conventional planning route under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, has been fully considered and it is proposed to disapply it given the need for an expedited decision timeframe necessary to deliver this project. The legislation will allow for the next stage of development for the strategic gas emergency reserve. It is intended to submit the development consent application by the end of 2026 in order to achieve an accelerated project delivery timeline. It is intended to bring forward a memo for Government later this year requesting permission to draft the strategic gas emergency reserve (operational) Bill to provide for the operation of the strategic gas emergency reserve. This will be the substantive Bill addressing provisions related to the operation, use and cost of the reserve as well as a number of policy matters previously raised by Oireachtas Members. The Bill contains 7 Parts and 38 sections, and I will give a brief overview of it now. Part 1 contains four sections containing standard legislative provisions that cover the Short Title of the Bill, commencement procedures, definitions of terms used in the Bill, a regulation-making power, as well as enabling the expenses of the Minister to be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas. Part 2 contains three sections relating to what comes within the scope of designated development. Section 5 provides for what constitutes "designated development" for the purposes of development and use of a strategic gas emergency reserve to be located at Cahiracon in County Clare. Sections 6 and 7 provide that the Planning and Development Act 2000, the Planning and Development Act 2024, and Regulation 2 of the European Communities (Birds and Natural Habitats) Regulations 2011 are disapplied in relation to designated development, to facilitate the alternative consenting process set out in the Bill. Part 3 contains four sections relating to the seeking of approval to carry out designated development. It provides for a mechanism for pre-application consultation. The required contents of an application are specified as well as the requirement to give public notice of an application and details of the public consultation procedure. It sets out who may submit an application for designated development under this procedure, being limited to Gas Networks Ireland or such other public bodies as may be prescribed. Part 4 contains 17 sections relating to the environmental impact assessment and appropriate assessment procedures that will apply to an application for designated development. These assessments shall be carried out by An Coimisiún Pleanála within specified, accelerated timelines. It provides for a period of 18 weeks for a decision to be made by An Coimisiún Pleanála from receipt of an application to final decision. Time when An Coimisiún Pleanála is waiting for a return of further information by the applicant will be disregarded towards this overall time period. Part 5 contains three sections relating to the determination of an application for approval to carry out designated development. Part 6 provides for miscellaneous provisions relating to designated development granted approval under this bespoke process. Section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 is disapplied to relevant bodies performing functions in relation to designated development. The Minister may also issue a direction to competent authorities responsible for the granting of relevant consents, to facilitate priority consenting of the project. The judicial review and access to justice provisions have been adapted from the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, retaining the well-tested framework that currently applies to a challenge to a planning decision in the courts. Part 7 contains one section relating to a consequential amendment to the Environmental Protection Act 1992. I commend the Bill to the House and I look forward to the debate and the contributions from Members.

Energy security is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of any Government. It is the promise we will be able to keep the lights on and keep the country's energy system powered. In this increasingly volatile world, we are trying to meet our energy needs but the Government has utterly failed. What we are presented with is a rushed and flawed solution that is in danger of shifting the financial burden for the Government's failures onto ordinary households. The Government is rushing through the legislation without time for proper democratic oversight or scrutiny. The deadline for Committee Stage amendments was yesterday before Second Stage had been read. This is not about guaranteeing Irish energy security but about managing the failure of the Government to invest properly in offshore wind and to make the necessary progress to ensuring energy independence and energy security. Despite being warned of the dangers of this for years, Ireland continues to rely on imports for approximately 80% of energy requirements, making us the fourth most fossil fuel import-dependent economy in the EU. We import nearly all of our oil and gas and over 80% of natural gas. In addition, under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ireland relies on fossil fuels to generate 81% of our energy requirements. This set-up was never going to deliver energy security. The risks were well flagged and vulnerabilities were well known, yet Fianna Fáil and fine Gael did not make any progression. For years the Government has failed to properly invest in indigenous renewable energy, and it has admitted this, failing to build the resilience of sufficient system. Now ordinary people have to step up. Instead of fixing the structural issues, the Bill doubles down on the same approach locking us further into fossil fuel dependency and charging the public. It is a fundamental breach of trust and families and workers are already struggling under the weight of the highest energy bills in Europe. We have more people owing on their bills for longer. They should not have to bankroll a Government that has failed to plan and invest and failed to protect our energy future. The Government is supposed to act as a safety net for households and not the other way around. Ordinary people did not decide to leave Ireland dependent on imported gas, they did not fail to deliver on renewable energy and they certainly did not design an energy model that prioritises corporate demand over public need. Sinn Féin is clear there must be no increase in household energy bills to protect Ireland's energy security. Ordinary people must not foot the bill. We have introduced amendments to this effect and they go to the heart of fairness. We propose a legislative wording that prohibits the socialisation of costs across household and SME energy bills, which would mandate that the regulator carries out a full assessment of the impact on household bills and that the Minister would introduce measures to mitigate this. I will turn to the changes the Bill proposes to our planning process. Unprecedented changes such as these require oversight, debate and scrutiny but the Minister of State has refused to engage on this. There are dangers associated with this potentially introducing further delays which could exacerbate the risks to Ireland's energy security. If the public are being asked to consent, then the changes and impact must be made explicitly clear. We wrote to the Minister of State and his officials to provide explicit clarification on the principal differences between the standard planning process for a strategic infrastructure development and-or a standard planning application under the Planning and Development Act 2024 and the Planning and Development Act 2000 and the alternative planning process as outlined. We have also requested this information be provided in advance of the remaining Stages, so that it can be properly scrutinised. I am waiting and hoping that it will be delivered before next Tuesday. We have proposed an amendment to delete the disapplication of the planning Acts. Nobody here is arguing that Ireland’s energy security should not be a priority. We have always said that it should be. Without those protections, however, we will never agree to rubberstamp any legislation to remove the safeguards without clarification and justification and robust safeguards. For example, this legislation fails to guarantee that the floating LNG facility will be explicitly and exclusively State-led. If it is truly strategic, then it should be State-led, publicly owned and delivered in the public interest. There should be no backdoor for commercial LNG. The legislation does state that Gas Networks Ireland, GNI, may apply to the Minister for approval but it does not explicitly rule out infrastructure being led by a commercial entity. Our amendments, therefore, will insist that any reserve should be fully State-led. We are also moving to ensure that the reserve will only be used in genuine emergencies. We will define the reserve as for emergency use only, aligned with EU standards, and prevent its use for routine energy supply. Ongoing reporting will be required to ensure compliance. Without these protections, there is a real risk that the strategic reserve would become normalised and entrench gas dependency. Our other amendments will ensure that such a facility is temporary, with a defined lifespan of ten years, subject to regular review every three years, has a decommissioning plan and is accompanied by independent assessments of whether it is necessary or proportionate and the best available option. If this is an emergency measure, then it should not become a permanent fixture by default. There is concern across the board that this could happen. We are also seeking to reverse one of the elements of this Bill, which is the potential sidelining of community engagement. Our amendment will require meaningful public consultation, including access to information, impact assessments and public hearings, because communities in County Clare must not be cut out of decisions that affect them so profoundly. We are also insisting on honesty about what is driving the energy crisis. Our amendments will require an independent assessment of the impact of data centres on energy demand and an analysis of whether this demand is driving the need for this reserve. We cannot have a situation where households pay more because the structural drivers of rising demand are left unaddressed. We believe this Bill is flawed, unfair, regressive and makes ordinary people shoulder the potential costs. It risks locking us into further fuel dependency and prioritises the wrong interest. Our amendments are about protection. They are to protect households from higher bills, protect the public interest and protect our energy future because the simple truth is that we cannot absorb any more costs. We need a different approach to drive down costs and put the needs of citizens first. We will be opposing this Bill, and I urge the House to support our amendments that put fairness, accountability and the public good back at the centre of our energy policy.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government for over a decade. They have had years to secure our energy future, yet they have failed. They have squandered our renewable potential and left us dangerously overexposed to volatile international markets and geopolitical conflict. We saw this during the invasion of Ukraine, and we are seeing it again now. Families and workers are left paying extortionate energy bills because this Government refused to plan. Now, in a panic, it is asking us to spend €1 billion to fix a crisis of its own making. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot be trusted on energy security because they do not treat it as a public good; they treat it as a corporate commodity. Sinn Féin believes that the answer to Ireland’s energy security must be State-led and guided by the public interest and not the corporate bottom line. This legislation is not fit for purpose. It disapplies the planning Act, strips local communities of their democratic rights and treats people with contempt. By removing normal planning safeguards, this Government is guaranteeing one thing: legal challenges and further delays. The Bill rolls out the red carpet to commercial LNG. The 2023 energy security review recommended a State-led facility as a strategic reserve, and it set out specific conditions. This legislation ignores those conditions. It allows private commercial developers to bypass the rules to which everybody else must adhere. Why is this? It is to impress international developers and not to serve the Irish people. This Bill will hike up household bills. The estimated €60 million annual running costs will be socialised through a levy on energy bills. Ordinary workers and families are already struggling with the cost of living, and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael want to add a new tax to their bills to pay for their failures. This is simply unacceptable. The Government will tell us this is necessary for our N-1 gas reserve criteria but the reality is that we are in this position because this Government has failed to develop our indigenous renewable resources. Ireland has 640 GW of untapped offshore wind potential. How much of it has been delivered? The answer is zero. We actually have less now than we had 20 years ago, such is the level of incompetence. The Government talks a big game but it is all hot air. Projects in the pipeline have not even broken ground. We are one of the most fossil fuel-dependent countries in Europe, importing 94% of our energy from fossil fuels. That is a strategic vulnerability, and this Government has entrenched it rather than fixed it. This move would further entrench it. Sinn Féin has a better vision. We want to achieve energy independence through renewables which are publicly-owned and community-owned, and serving the common good. We want to follow countries like Spain, Norway and Denmark, which insulated their citizens from crises through public investment. If this facility must go ahead, then it must be strictly State-led, fully transparent and subject to democratic oversight. It must not be a backdoor for commercial LNG or an excuse to hike bills further. The State must lead and the people must come first.

This Bill is a damning indictment of this Government’s failure to properly address our energy security, and this is absolutely essential in a functioning democracy. Two geopolitical events have landed and given us ample warning about the need for energy independence. Yet this is the Government's solution. It has done nothing else. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the American-Israeli war on Iran this year have shown us that we simply cannot continue to rely on imports to keep the lights on and our energy going. This is what is ultimately driving up the cost of our electricity bills, which are now the highest in Europe. A total of 80% of our energy is currently fuelled by imports. Realising that this is probably not the best way to guarantee energy security, the Government thinks this is a good idea to solve the problem. It is even more investment in fossil fuel and imported gas, and all to placate Trump. It is glaringly obvious to most people that the simple solution to our energy crisis issues is to invest in indigenous sources of energy, such as wind and solar, something that could have been ramped up immediately following the energy crisis in 2022. The Government failed to act then and this is the solution it has arrived at now. The lack of intervention and meaningful attempts to try to get a handle on household bills means one in three is now in energy arrears. This is why Sinn Féin tabled amendments to the current Bill to ensure that ordinary people do not have to foot the bill for this daft attempt at protecting Ireland’s energy security. It is the Government which has completely butchered our energy security. It is entirely its responsibility. Its solution is a double-edged sword, as proven by the two wars started by Russia and by America and Israel. Any form of gas that we import will be susceptible to market price shocks. An LNG terminal will be much the same. It will also further lock us into fossil fuel infrastructure and increase our emissions output. This would come at a time when we are seeing some of the highest temperatures ever recorded. Just yesterday, France recorded its hottest day since records began in 1947, breaking the record of the previous day. As many as 40 people drowned in that country in the past few days as they tried to cool themselves down in the scorching heat. Today, we in Ireland expect to record historic highs in temperatures. This must be a stark warning for us. We cannot keep going down the path of fossil fuels. Also, we cannot afford merely to develop our grid and ensure energy supply, as this Bill does, to keep data centres on stream. As part of our amendments to the Bill, we ask that a fully independent assessment of the impact of data centres on energy demand and security be carried out. We cannot have a situation where households are asked to pay more, as they will be because of this Bill, while data centres suck up the energy that is vital to build the infrastructure we desperately need. As my colleague Deputy Pa Daly has previously outlined, we urge the Minister to consider the amendments put forward by Sinn Féin, support them and put the public good at the centre of our energy policy.

The incredible weather we are seeing across Europe and its significance are not going to be lost on anybody. France has recorded its hottest day, at 44.3°C. Tragically, at least 18 heat-related deaths have been seen in France and dozens of people have drowned as they tried to cool off. The UK had its hottest June day on record this month, at 36.1°C. We have seen red heat warnings issued across Europe. Indeed, here in Ireland it would appear we are seeing our hottest day on record. It is clear that climate change is not something that is coming. It is not something that is going to be presented to us in the future. Climate change is here. Days like today really need to be warning signs for the Government because it has a very big job to do. That is not just to ensure that, as a country, we can adapt to the climate change that we are experiencing but also to do everything it can to stop it from getting worse and to work internationally in that regard. Unfortunately, what we have seen from this Government is a rowing back when it comes to climate action and climate-action ambition. We have seen a repeated failure to meet targets, and even a failure to lay out the list of policies that would meet our 51% legal reduction target. Not once has the climate action plan specified enough policies to meet our targets. This is not even about implementing them. I am referring to the Government setting out what policies we need. Never once has the current or previous Government spelt out enough policies. That in itself is a very stark illustration that the Government is not taking this seriously enough. The LNG facility has not just come upon us in the last week or two, the last month or two or, indeed, the last year. This discussion is happening because the current and previous Governments have failed to come to grips with our energy security and to put in place measures that will assist us to become energy independent. This LNG facility is a sort of emergency solution because all the hard work has not been done. We have seen delay after delay regarding much of the major infrastructure we would need in order to deal with our emissions, but also to have a very strong renewable energy system. We have less offshore wind energy now than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, we were a world leader in offshore wind. We had the Arklow Bank but that has been decommissioned. We have had delays in respect of our interconnectors. As I have raised repeatedly, I do not believe the Government has done enough when it comes to solar energy to make households resilient and to support people in this regard. I do not believe the Government has focused enough on battery storage and its potential. Over the past number of weeks, we have heard from some experts at meetings of the climate committee on the huge potential of, and the technological advances that have been made when it comes to, battery storage. Yet we have not had a Government that has focused on all those issues. Indeed, we have had a Government that has closed its eyes to the issue of demand management. At some stage, a tough decision is going to have to be made where we say we cannot afford to allow the continued incredible growth of large energy users like data centres, because that will ultimately make us more vulnerable when it comes to energy security. They are reliant on gas and they are pushing up our energy prices. They are the reason that we now apparently need the €1 billion LNG facility. It is not to meet the needs of individual households or businesses, or people in hospitals or schools. It is not to meet those needs. The LNG facility is to ensure that if there is a problem with the interconnector or the gas line from Scotland, energy for the approximately 250 large corporates will be available. At some stage, we do have to start considering bringing our enterprise, climate and energy policies all together, because at the moment we are seeing far too much siloing of the issues. The Government is in a position now where it is acknowledging there is a big problem, that we are at risk and that we need to come up with a solution. There are alternatives to what is being proposed. I really do not believe there has been enough examination of the alternatives. In the event that we lose connection with Scotland for a gas pipeline, which is highly unlikely but would be very problematic, what are the alternatives to the LNG facility? I really do not believe that has been given enough consideration. I have spoken about demand management, battery storage, fast-tracking our interconnectors, district heating to provide heating to people, alternative fuels and requiring large corporates to have more alternative fuels on site. These have not been examined robustly enough. When I read through the energy security reports, it appears that the Government essentially got the answers it wanted from the questions put in the reviews. It is really important that the Government stall now. This is a major piece of infrastructure and it is costly. It will cost us €1 billion at least and it will be in place for many years. It will also be costly from an environmental perspective. The Minister of State needs to re-examine that. The Social Democrats have tabled amendments reflecting these views. We will be debating them when appropriate, but I ask that the Minister of State give serious consideration to looking at all the different pieces of the jigsaw and seeing whether there is a way that the various elements can be brought together to ensure we are energy resilient. The other issue I want to raise with the Minister of State is one that very much surprised me. There is a general lack of trust in the Department and Government in this regard. I certainly was very sceptical and I was concerned that this legislation was a way of allowing for commercial LNG facilities to begin operating. When there was a pulling back on the fracked gas policy and when the Minister did not really engage on the planning issues in Shannon, my sense was that this was really a Trojan Horse to allow a commercial facility to operate. I do not know whether that is the case or not. The one thing I have repeatedly raised with the Minister, and on which I have repeatedly received assurances from him, is that the LNG facility will be State-owned, State-led and not commercial, and that there will be sufficient guardrails in place to make sure that is the case. I have had this back and forth with the Minister many times, as I did at committee. It has always been promised that it would be the case. I am worried as to why it was not mentioned in the Bill. The primary purpose of this LNG facility is to act as a risk-mitigation measure in a very limited fashion that can only be done by the State, run and managed by the State, and is not to increase our gas usage. That usage is to be very controlled. If that is the purpose of the facility, this why is that not stated in the Bill? It is not mentioned at all. I am sure the Minister of State will understand that it sets off alarms. It says to me that this process cannot be trusted. Now, when the Department or anyone makes any statements or comes forward with any advice, solutions or evidence, I and others are going to be questioning it because there is a fear that it is not being transparent. That is why the energy security, as the Department is looking at all the other measures, is also important. We want a transparent process. We want to ensure that the people who will be footing the bill for this €1 billion know why this has gone in and know that the Government looked at all these other measures and decided they were not going to work. It must be transparent. It is important that the Government gets that done. I would like to make a similar point. I am hugely worried about the disapplication of the birds and habitat directive. As I said, there has been a rowing back on a lot of climate legislation. There has been fear that there would be a similar rowing back on legislation to protect biodiversity. There has certainly been a movement in Europe to do that so I was disappointed to see that also being applied in this Bill. I was also very surprised to see it because during pre-legislative scrutiny, we were told at that stage that we will not be exempting this facility from the habitats directive. That is what we were told in committee. Yet, this Bill disapplies the birds and habitats directive. That again comes back to the lack of trust about what the motives are here. That is another important consideration. We have been far too slow in ensuring that Ireland can exist as an independent energy State. We have relied far too heavily on other countries to do the heavy lifting for us. We have not been innovative enough. We have really been quite lazy when it comes to our energy security and independence, and ensuring that we have an energy system that people in this country can afford. The lived experience of the people at the moment is that that is not the case. Ireland has the highest electricity prices. An official from the Department was in talking about the issue recently. The official was stressing that we have done so well when it comes to our renewable energies. We have but what are we doing with them? We are funnelling them back into these large corporates. The benefits from the renewables are not being felt by individuals and that is a problem. We want our citizens, domestic users and small businesses to have faith that when we move to a fossil fuel-free future, they will not be left behind. That is not happening because they are actually being left behind. Not only are they being left behind, they are having to foot the bill. They are footing the bill for data centres. They are going to be footing the €1 billion bill for this LNG facility that is only there to ensure that 250 large energy users can continue to operate if there is problem with the pipeline. Domestic users will be footing that bill. That not only has problems from an equity perspective. It is also a problem from a social and community perspective. We cannot allow people to feel that they are being left behind by this transition and that the people who are gaining the benefit and are being prioritised by this Government are the big boys and the big players. We want everybody to be able to benefit and to enjoy lower electricity prices and warmer homes. We want them to be energy independent. We want them to be able to drive electric vehicles and have solar panels on their homes. When they do need to access electricity or energy from the grid, we must ensure it is there at an affordable price. Unfortunately, the Government is far away from that at the moment. However, it is not too late. There is now an opportunity to pause things and bring in that review. If the Government is so convinced that this LNG facility is the only answer to this energy security risk, it needs to spell it out for people. It should do the analysis and let everybody see it because it is costly and, as I said, not just financially but environmentally.

I welcome the Bill. It is legislation that we debated at length at the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy. As a member of the committee, I can say that we had open and frank encagement. Objectively, our goals are to be independent, secure and affordable and to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels but we also need to ensure that we have a backup policy in place. I listened to some of the criticism about other projects taking too long to deliver and that we talk about them too much. On the other hand, we now want to talk about them further. There was pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. It was to a shorter timeframe but we must highlight and emphasise that this is an emergency, this is a temporary measure and we need to ensure its delivery. Fundamentally, there is a responsibility on the State to ensure that we have security around our energy and that is the objective here, while also being cognisant of our client obligations. This Bill came about as part of 17 actions highlighted by the Department's 2023 strategy, Energy Security in Ireland to 2030. I recently attended an EirGrid strategy launch where its representatives said that during the Covid-19 pandemic, demand was not peaking and we did not have the same level of economic activity that would result in spikes. However, since we have exited the pandemic, there is that additional demand and additional focus required to ensure investment. Considering current global volatility and international conflicts, how they weaponise energy supplies and how fragile global markets can be, we must have our own independence. In that context, it is unacceptable not to act when we can see clearly where our vulnerabilities lie. To that end, I support the Bill and the intentions behind it. This is an insurance policy for the State. We also have a temporary energy generation facility at Shannonbridge in my constituency to ensure that we do not see mass blackouts. We must be fair and open to the public at large that we need that backup plan and energy security. We need a contingency in place to plan for the worst. In terms of independence, we are going in completely the opposite direction when we talk about interconnectors. We cannot depend solely on our neighbours for our energy supply. We must have independence. That is another reason it is so important that we ensure this Bill proceeds. To be fair to the debate at the committee, one of the items we debated comprehensively in terms of the provisions in the Bill was how we would allow development or operation by a commercial operator. Those concerns have been listened to, despite the shorter timeframe for pre-legislative scrutiny. Only public bodies will be prescribed by the Minister in relation to this operation. If this is truly to be a strategic reserve, we need to prepare for the worst-case scenario and it must stay within the confines of State control as a result. We are seeing growing demand and growing economic activity and we need to ensure we proceed with this strategic gas emergency reserve in the form of the floating storage and regasification unit in Clare. It must be strictly an emergency reserve. It cannot become a backdoor for new commercial fossil fuel infrastructure, nor can it lead to an overall increase in our national gas consumption. Our focus on the development of renewables must be steadfast. County Offaly has been to the fore. I hear other speakers here say we need to do more on renewables. Why do they not go back to look at their county development plans and outline more spatial areas for renewable development? That is what we did in Offaly and we have been successful with 30% of our landmass in the county. We are one of the highest producers of energy in the country. Rather than looking at national Government, Deputies should have a discussion at local government level to see how county development plans can be prepared and devised. I cast my mind back to the national broadband plan and some of the commentary of the Opposition about that plan facing catastrophic failure and it being reckless to proceed with it. It is the same song with a different tune today. We need this. We need to ensure we remain competitive, that we see digital and tech advancements and that we keep our position on the global stage in attracting employment and making sure this is a good place to invest, work and live. This is not a decision of either-or when it comes to large energy users or homes. It has to be that they work concurrently and for the right reasons. We cannot pause this. We have to proceed with it. It is an important Bill. It sends the right message that Ireland is working towards renewables, but is also working towards energy security. I commend the Minister of State on bringing the Bill to the House and look forward to seeing it pass.

I sincerely believe that from a climate perspective, this is perhaps the most regressive legislation produced by the Government. Any legislation or infrastructure that requires us to overturn a ban on fracked gas is just inherently bad for the climate. I heard the Minister of State on "Morning Ireland" this morning and I sympathise with his desire to enhance our energy security, particularly in the current context. We all understand the vulnerabilities Ireland faces. We know the risks posed by geopolitical instability and our over-reliance on imported fossil fuels. Equally, we know the importance of ensuring households can heat their homes, hospitals can operate, businesses can function and that our entire energy system remains stable in times of crisis. None of us dispute that. Energy security matters, and there are lessons to be learned from the events of recent years when it comes to our energy system and energy security but it appears, based on this effort to import even more fossil fuel, that the Government is learning precisely the wrong lessons. I would absolutely support genuine measures to strengthen Ireland's energy security. We raised these during pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. Other Deputies have raised them in this House today already. They include investment in renewables, energy storage, interconnection, demand management and grid improvements. This is the direction of travel we want to see, if we are serious about energy security and our climate commitments. Look at Spain. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, it rapidly scaled up investment in renewables and it is now largely insulated from the recent fossil fuel price shocks because it is not importing quite so much oil and gas. This is the sort of effort we want to see here and I would gladly support the Government in such efforts. What I and the Labour Party cannot support is legislation that risks locking us into greater fossil fuel dependence, while simultaneously weakening planning safeguards, diluting climate accountability and concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in the hands of a Minister. It is frankly ludicrous that the plan the Government has landed on to strengthen our energy security is to import more harmful and increasingly volatile fossil fuels. I would have thought recent events might at least have given pause for thought. We were talking about having to ration oil and gas just a few months ago. The reality that is becoming increasingly apparent, and which the Government is refusing to accept, is that strengthening our energy security and continuing to rely on imported fossil fuels are incompatible. As I have said on a number of occasions, the best and perhaps only way to genuinely secure our energy supply into the future is to urgently and significantly scale up our renewable generation and, importantly, our storage capacity. We have the potential to achieve genuine energy sovereignty and, crucially, we have the potential to do so from clean sources. The Minister of State could have brought forward a Bill that would inject much-needed urgency into the deployment of renewables, particularly offshore wind. He could have brought forward a Bill to speed up the necessary works that need to be done on our ports so they can handle offshore wind turbines, or he could have prioritised the long-awaited marine protected areas legislation to ensure the necessary environmental safeguards are in place. He would certainly have my support in doing so. Instead of seeking to speed up the deployment of renewables, the Government is further entrenching expensive, harmful and unreliable fossil fuels in our system the supply of which, at the end of the day, is largely out of our control. We fundamentally cannot reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by importing more of them. This will lock us into fossil fuel use for decades and the infrastructure contemplated here - offshore moorings, the onshore terminal, pipeline connection to the existing gas network - represents capital investment with a multi-decade operational lifespan. There is a structural tension with statutory climate commitments that require a trajectory to net zero by 2050 and which include carbon budgets. In our pre-legislative scrutiny report, the Oireachtas climate committee recommended a sunset clause be included in the Bill with a clear phase-out mechanism and explicit decommissioning requirements. All of that is absent. Sometimes I wonder why we bother. There is no sunset clause, no legislated end date and no statutory pathway towards closure of the facility. There is no requirement the facility cease operations once particular energy security or renewable generation benchmarks are met. While the Government presents this facility as a sort of temporary, emergency piece of infrastructure, there are virtually no safeguards against it becoming a permanent feature of our energy system. This is where the lack of trust in the Government's plans for this facility other Deputies have spoken about comes from. I and other members of the Opposition have submitted amendments to give effect to our pre-legislative scrutiny recommendations and I hope the Minister of State will genuinely consider these on Committee Stage. The Minister of State is bringing forward this Bill on the back of an energy security review, but the landscape has changed completely since that review was carried. Even prior to the present fossil fuel crisis, during pre-legislative scrutiny, the committee heard extensive evidence suggesting the assumptions made when the review was conducted around demand, security risks, renewable deployment, storage technologies and so on, had evolved considerably in the meantime and the committee report recommended a new review be carried out on that basis. That recommendation has also been ignored. Let us talk about the cost. It has been estimated that the LNG terminal will cost just shy of €1 billion over the next decade. How will that be paid for? It will not be through higher prices levied against large energy users like data centres. Last week, the Labour Party brought forward a motion calling on the Government to make data centres pay their fair share, but it was voted down. Ordinary household bill payers, who are already being fleeced, will foot the bill for this. The committee made several recommendations on the cost burden of the facility. The first recommendation of the report says the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, should have to carry out an assessment of the impact on household bills and justify the socialisation of LNG costs across households and small businesses. There is a also a recommendation that costs be weighted towards large energy users rather than households and another that an overall cost-benefit analysis be conducted. Again, none of these feature in the Bill. No protections for consumers against higher bills are included in the proposed law. I would like to know whether any assessment has been carried out on the impact the recent crisis in the fuel markets has had on the Government's cost estimate. The European benchmark price for LNG soared by as much as 60% in the days following the start of Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war on Iran, after the shutdown of a major LNG facility in Qatar. God knows when that war is actually going to come to an end and presumably the current extreme level of volatility is not priced into the previous cost estimate. The likelihood is the price we end up paying for this terminal over the next decade will far exceed €1 billion. This underscores the irresponsibility of going ahead with this proposal. We simply cannot secure our energy supply by further exposing ourselves to price shocks like this. We are already vulnerable to an increasingly unstable geopolitical arena and ordinary households and commuters are paying the price. Charging ahead with the introduction of even more fossil fuels to Ireland will only make matters worse. One of the things that has frustrated me most in the conversation on energy security and this particular proposal is that energy insecurity and this LNG terminal are presented in binary terms as if it was a simple choice between building LNG infrastructure and energy insecurity, which I do not accept. There are alternatives, some of which I have mentioned, that strengthen security while simultaneously reducing emissions and that reduce our fossil fuel dependence rather than increase it. These alternatives have already been demonstrably successful elsewhere in Europe and I have already referred to Spain. It is incredibly frustrating this is being presented as our only option. This Bill goes well beyond just being an energy security matter. It seeks to bypass not just our climate laws but also our planning laws which, funnily enough, were presented as the Minister's magnum opus in his previous brief. Sections 6 and 7 disapply both the Planning and Development Act of 2000 and the Planning and Development Act of 2024 to designated development carried out under an approval granted under section 29, which itself concentrates decision-making power in the hands of the Minister. Planning consent processes under those Acts would ordinarily require consideration of national planning policy, including the national planning framework and any climate-related material considerations. Their disapplication removes that layer of scrutiny entirely and channels decision-making exclusively to the Minister. We saw a similar arrangement in the passenger cap Bill earlier this week. It is true An Coimisiún Pleanála has to carry out an environmental impact assessment and an appropriate assessment which the Minister must consider but he must also consider "the urgent need to ensure and protect the security of gas supply in the State". It is pretty obvious the latter will be given precedence. Regrettably, despite the current extreme hot weather warnings and our abysmal record on decarbonisation, there is yet again no urgency when it comes to the climate. It is quite clear the only urgency the Government considers is facilitating more imported fossil fuels via an LNG terminal or essentially unrestricted additional flights from Dublin Airport. There is no real statutory requirement on the face of section 29 of the Bill for the Minister to give reasons for departing from, or accepting, environmental assessments beyond a few generalities. With this Bill the Government is trying to ram through approval of a hugely damaging piece of infrastructure by creating a bespoke planning route unavailable to other projects and certainly not ones that would benefit us from a climate and decarbonisation perspective. Like the passenger cap Bill, this is a significant departure from normal planning practice. It is a departure several stakeholders raised concerns about during pre-legislative scrutiny at the climate committee. Nobody is claiming our planning system is perfect - far from it - but public confidence depends on decisions being made through transparent and independent processes. When Government proposes to remove a project from the ordinary planning framework and place final authority directly in the hands of a Minister, it has a duty to demonstrate such extraordinary powers are absolutely necessary. I am not convinced it has done so. The Bill goes further still. For the third time this term and the second time this week, the Government is proposing we abandon section 15 of the climate Act which requires public bodies to perform their functions in a manner consistent with national climate objectives and climate policy. Disapplying it removes a legally-operative constraint that would otherwise require those bodies to weigh climate considerations in discharging their statutory functions. This is a deliberative legislative choice to insulate the project from climate scrutiny at the decision-making level. By consistently disapplying section 15 when it is politically inconvenient, the Government is rendering it effectively meaningless but it exists for a reason. Climate and environmental considerations are not an optional extra. The climate crisis is quite literally existential and section 15 of the climate Act more generally is the legal framework through which we seek to meet our obligations. When Government starts carving out exemptions from climate legislation for fossil fuel infrastructure, it raises serious questions about the credibility of our commitment to our climate goals. If our obligations can be set aside whenever they become inconvenient, what confidence can the public have that climate legislation means what it says? This issue featured prominently during pre-legislative scrutiny. Several witnesses voiced concerns about this provision, which will effectively deem LNG infrastructure compatible with our climate laws regardless of the emissions impact. Recommendation 13 of the pre-legislative scrutiny report stated "The Bill should explicitly state that the Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve will be required to comply with Section 15 obligations under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015". The Bill does the exact opposite. The recommendations in that report were agreed on a cross-party basis. There were some recommendations that did not make it in because we voted against them and the Government voted them down but this report was agreed across parties. To see it ignored so thoroughly is very depressing. This is the second aggressively anti-climate Bill we have seen from this Government this week alone. The Government is telling people that taking climate change and our biodiversity crisis seriously was a luxury of a previous era and something that is now preventing progress. I fundamentally disagree with that line of thinking. The climate catastrophe facing us requires progress but it is a different kind of progress to the one this Government is currently offering. There is huge opportunity for our country in tackling our climate crisis. There are huge numbers of new jobs to be created, new industries to be established and new futures to be forged. This Government can and should be treating decarbonisation and our climate targets with the same urgency it is treating the delivery of this LNG reserve, the removal of the Dublin Airport cap and the provision of critical infrastructure. The Government is going to guillotine debate on both this Bill and the Dublin Airport cap next week. In the Labour Party, we have a vision for a different kind of Ireland which is a fairer, better future-facing country but the proposals and Bills being put forward by this Government lack ambition for that different kind of Ireland and a different world. This Government is all about simply continuing the status quo and going back to doing things the same way we always have done, that is, captured by fossil fuel interests. Those of us who want this to change are called Luddites. The guardrails put in place by the previous Government to finally force this State and its governments to face up to our climate obligations are being systematically dismantled. I, the Labour Party and others in opposition will continue to push this Government to live up to its responsibilities and to give some hope to our future generations, who badly need it. We will be putting forward numerous amendments to this Bill and I look forward to debating them in the House in the limited time that is being given. I really hope the Government will take them seriously and integrate as many of them as possible into the legislation.

I am pleased to speak on this Bill, which I support. Recent events in the Middle East have underscored the necessity of this Bill. The energy crisis caused by the conflict in the Middle East has seen record price hikes but, more importantly, raised questions over Ireland's energy security. This is an issue that I have highlighted on several occasions in the House in this term and the previous one. We are an island at the end of the European supply line. We have no meaningful buffer and no gas storage. We are the only country in the European Union in that position. When a shock comes, it reaches us very quickly and it hits hard, so this Bill matters to us. The State-led strategic gas reserve in the form of a floating storage and regasification unit to be located on the Shannon Estuary, is a sensible, welcome and necessary measure. It will provide backup for our electricity supply at moments of low renewable output and it gives us a cushion in the event of a serious disruption to supply. I particularly welcome that it is designed as a temporary, State-owned, emergency-only facility. The Minister repeatedly said this was the plan. The scaremongering and disinformation we have heard has been disappointing but not surprising. The proposed structure matters. It reduces the risk of stranded assets, does not stimulate additional gas demand and it is compatible with our binding climate targets. This is energy security and climate responsibility working together, not against one another. I also welcome the accelerated consenting framework in the Bill. The conventional planning route would have delivered this around 2031 and we cannot wait until then. The bespoke process here retains the essentials, namely, the environmental impact assessment, the appropriate assessment and public consultation, but within defined timelines. That is the right balance. That is the right balance. It reflects a Government that has learned the hard lesson that infrastructure delayed is, too often, infrastructure denied. I want to be clear that this reserve is a safety net. It is not a strategy. A reserve is what we draw down in an emergency. It is not what keeps the lights on year after year. I will use my remaining time to speak about the bigger picture. If the recent crisis has taught us anything, it is that we need to be far more ambitious about our indigenous supply. Corrib, which has served us well, is reaching the end of its productive life. When it goes, our domestic gas production goes with it and our import dependency becomes near total at precisely the wrong moment. I have long argued, including during my time on the climate action committee in the previous Dáil, that we are dangerously exposed. I want to see us extend the productive life of the Corrib infrastructure where it is feasible and responsible to do so. The existing infrastructure off the Mayo coast is a national asset. There are indigenous prospects within tie-back range of it that could materially reduce our reliance on imported gas. That is gas that arrives with a carbon footprint many times higher than anything we would produce ourselves. It makes no environmental or strategic sense to shut down our cleaner production only to import dirtier gas through a single pipeline from another jurisdiction. This is not a choice between fossil fuels and renewables; it is both, sequenced properly. I want to see us go faster on solar and far faster on offshore wind. The Minister of State is aware of my promotion of those renewables. Our offshore wind potential is among the best in Europe, but we have been far too slow to capture it. Ultimately, the renewable transition is the destination, but we will need a bridging supply to get there safely. We should be honest with people about that, rather than pretending otherwise. I will mention households because all of this is abstract to families and households worried about heating bills. Oil prices have eased back in recent weeks from their crisis peak, and that relief must be passed on at the pump and on the bill. It cannot be absorbed quietly into margins. I ask the Minister of State to ensure the regulator and relevant authorities are watching this closely. Looking to the winter ahead, the Government must act to protect the most vulnerable. I ask that we increase the fuel allowance in the budget and seriously examine a further energy credit for households, particularly those in need. People have been through a challenging number of months and certain households will need support as we enter this winter. With all that said, this is a Bill that is long overdue. The energy supply report that was published was referred to earlier. We have to use that as the basis. Any more time given to this will be time delayed to such a strategic infrastructural piece that this country needs.

I support this important Bill. Often, Government TDs assume things will go ahead and Ministers will lead the charge, but it is important that we stand behind them and explain the benefits. When I was a councillor, I saw infrastructure in small, local ways, such as local bridges, roads or maybe a burst water pipe. In here, however, we are looking at the national issues. Coming into the national Parliament, we are so much more conscious of what is going on internationally. Deputy Devlin spoke about how energy has become key to the national conversation, but it is also key to the worldwide conversation. We often read about how energy is the key to national autonomy. If a country does not have access to energy, it is at risk of compromising its freedom. Obviously, I am not saying we are compromising our freedom but, at the same time, we need to ensure that we have opportunities for everyone. That is what this Bill is allowing us to do. The Bill is not saying that we have to go in one specific direction. Rather, it is a part of a range of different targets and things we are putting in place to provide us with greater energy security. As Deputy Devlin outlined, it is not all about focusing on this specifically. This gives us the opportunity to seek other ways. As someone who was a CFO of a solar energy company, I know the benefits of renewables. I would be the first to say that renewables are the way forward. I would put them on every roof in the country if I could. It is important to push for that, as well as ensuring we have offshore wind infrastructure. Those are important to do. In response to Deputy Ahern, no one on this side of the House is losing that focus. We are really focused on that. I can see that all across my party. At the same time, we are trying to put options and opportunities in place. It is about putting storage and back-up in place. Ultimately, we would all love it if we could just build wind farms and have it all done in the morning, with windmills outside our houses and everything solved, but it is honestly not as simplistic as that. I listened patiently to Deputy Ahern for quite a long time. There is both good and bad in the different points he made. I agree with some of them and, obviously, I fundamentally disagree with others. I disagree with his description of the ethos on this side of the House. Ultimately, everyone in this Chamber wants what is best for the country and for the future of our children. We all want what is best for our families in many different ways, children or not. We are trying to secure their future. Deputy Tóibín will have different views, as will Deputy Cronin, but we are all coming here for the right reasons. We might have a different view of how those rules should be applied. Some say we should do less, while others say we should do more. I do not think anyone would be more aware of what the needs and requirements of the people in Clare are than the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, who is sitting on the Front Bench. More than anyone else, he fundamentally knows the impact on the locality and, more importantly, the broad opportunities that exist in this situation. To speak to the wider point, the infrastructure committee launched its latest report, a key part of which was the Critical Infrastructure Bill. The country and Government are doing well economically. No one needs me to say we are running budgets surpluses. We are an anomaly in the western world with the amount of money we have. We are very successful in that regard, but we must ensure we are investing it in infrastructure and the future of the country. This is one such step. I know Members might have a different view in this regard but if we do not put those templates in place, we will not be able to develop in the future. This is what this Bill is part of. I want to make sure the Minister of State knows there is good support on this side of the House, rather than simply hearing the negative from the other side of the House. It is important we build that future because, ultimately, we are all here to do the best on behalf of the country. We may have slightly different ways of doing it but this is an important step towards energy security, which is a huge issue for the country. I welcome the opportunity to support the Bill.

This is the second Bill I will discuss this week which will act to tear holes in our country's climate ambition. It is doing that on a week when we are seeing the realities of the scale of climate change across Europe, with heat impacting on so many countries and making life intolerable for millions of people. The irony of this is lost on the Government, which is rushing through this legislation and the airport cap legislation with the minimum of debate. I will focus on that before I get into the substantive discussion. I have heard other Deputies eloquently advocate for this legislation. There are clear, different approaches and views in this regard, and that is fine. However, if that is the case, let us test it. This Bill and the Dublin Airport cap Bill will be discussed on Committee, Report and Remaining Stages for two hours each next week. I cannot recall seeing such important legislation rammed through this House with such little respect. I have put a set of amendments down on each of these Bills and other members of the Opposition have done likewise. There is a difference in approach between the Government and the Opposition. Let that be tested on Committee Stage. It could be done on Committee Stage next week. We all know what the end result will be, but this could be tested on Committee Stage next week and the Bill could then proceed to Report Stage the following week. It would still be done by the end of this year. It is deeply disrespectful, but also indicative of the lack of seriousness with which the Government treats these issues, that it is simply ramming this through the Dáil without the requisite opportunity to debate, amend or improve. I will now turn to the legislation before us. My central issue with this Bill, the airport cap Bill and the Critical Infrastructure Bill is that all three seek a carve-out from the application of the climate action Act. With regard to this Bill, to be clear, no proposal to introduce new fossil fuel infrastructure into our country's energy mix should go ahead without a climate impact assessment. That is exactly what section 33 of this Bill proposes to do. If an emergency reserve is needed, and it is a big "if", that "if" will be contingent on several factors. It will be contingent on how soon and how readily we can electrify our energy systems and support it with interconnection and support it with storage. Then it is critically important that a Bill that enables such a piece of infrastructure would take place within the framework of decarbonising our society. To do otherwise would create a situation where we develop a reserve which locks us in to further fossil fuel dependency well past its sale-by date. That, in my view, is what this proposal will do. Every member of the Government who spoke on this said this is only for an emergency. If the Government is serious about that, let it help us achieve that by putting the relevant measures into this Bill, make sure it is time-bound and make sure it is compliant with our larger climate obligations in the Act and in the annual climate action plans. That is what would at least provide some element of reassurance that this is only emergency legislation. That could be done. I will be bringing forward amendments to allow that - other members of the Opposition will be doing the same - although they will not be accepted. That is why it is hard to hear this tale being spun that we are all in it together. There are two distinct views here about what this Bill could achieve and we will not even get the opportunity to tease that out over the next week. Exempting fossil fuel infrastructure from the application of the climate Act sets a worrying precedent. It also makes a mockery of the efforts taking place all over the country, in households and in businesses in wide-ranging sectors of the economy, to reduce our emissions. What is happening with this legislation, taken in conjunction with the Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026 passed by the Houses, is the Government is creating a situation where our climate targets will undergo death by a thousand exemptions. Let us remember that where we exempt sections of society or the economy from the application of the Act, other sections of society have to meet the difference in terms of emissions. Therefore, we are pushing the burden onto households, small businesses and other parts of the economy. We are exempting this liquefied natural gas, LNG, terminal but for every other public body in Ireland, the commitment to national mitigation plans and to the adaptation frameworks and the transition objectives all are legally binding. They are not only guidelines; they are legally binding. That is what happened in the Act all of us, all parties represented here, voted for in 2021. Now we have a major fossil fuel project that has been planned to work outside of the country's climate law and that will inevitably lead to calls for other pieces of infrastructure to be excluded too. We see that with the airport cap and the Critical Infrastructure Bill. If the climate law applies to everything except the most carbon intensive projects, essentially, it applies to nothing at all. That is what we are doing in the three pieces of legislation that will be passed in this House over these two months. Without the right guardrails in place in this legislation, we are putting ourselves at risk of creating significant fossil fuel lock-in within our energy system and doubling down on a higher cost of fuel for families and for homes. LNG terminals do not store LNG for long periods of time. They have to be continually topped off because of the burn off of LNG, even when there is no emergency. This creates a continual demand for the LNG gas in the energy system, sending the exact opposite message to what we should be sending right now. We know that long-term use of fossil fuels is incompatible with our 2050 targets, which should take priority. Even if the terminal is built for security today, and let us not forget it will not be built today but will be operational in 2030 at the earliest, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has recognised that LNG terminals will have to be phased out within ten-to-15 years. Then we will have this terminal as a stranded asset. It will become unusable and uneconomic. I note that this Bill does not require the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, to have a clear pathway to wind down and decommission the reserve while approving it, and that only adds to those risks. If we are to have a gas reserve, it should entail the smallest possible amount for the shortest possible period of time with a clear exit strategy, all of which is underpinned by the mechanisms of the climate Act. The Bill we are debating today does none of those things. Instead, it leaves the use of LNG in our energy system as an open-ended question at a time when we know just how unreliable supplies of fossil fuels can be globally. I will turn to that point of security of supply because that has been the central argument that the Government has put forward. I believe tying ourselves into LNG will do the opposite of providing security of energy supply in our country. We know that using LNG fails to deliver affordability. We saw the first day of the Iran war, the price of LNG shot up 46% in one single day. The world's largest LNG terminal, Ras Laffan, in Qatar, was closed on day two of the Iran conflict. Twenty per cent of the world's LNG comes from there. Much of the rest of the LNG comes from the United States, with all the risks of being dependent on the whims of the Trump Administration and whoever follows him. We are tying our economy into a substance, a highly-polluting fossil fuel, that is unstable as to both its price and its availability. That is not energy security. What will deliver energy security for Ireland is producing our own renewable energy here at home and that should be our priority. That should be where the Government is fixing its time and where the Government is fixing the huge economic resources - €900 million - that this particular project will cost. We should not be relying on other countries to produce our energy for us, such as using Qatari LNG or US fracked gas. We need our own energy so that we can make our own choices. The solution is to rapidly build onshore and offshore wind, develop our solar farms, put in place the energy interconnection systems that will tie us into other grids and ensure the energy we create here at times of high production from renewables is stored through rolling out battery storage at scale, and I raised this issue with the Taoiseach earlier this week. When my party was in government, as part of the Government, we put in place the frameworks that would enable the roll-out of offshore wind. We went from a situation where there was only a skeleton crew of staff working in the Department of energy on the issue of offshore to creating a new offshore wind unit in the Department. We brought together a task force, bringing in industry so that it could engage with the Department in terms of the barriers that existed there. As part of that Government, we worked with Ministers in other Departments to set up Marine Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, to get the marine planning legislation passed. That Government was able to advance five major renewable energy auctions in 2023. Three years on, there is still not one of those feeding into the grid. At the same time, every time wind energy industry representatives comes into this House and talk to TDs, they say An Coimisiún Pleanála does not have enough staff to get the planning applications done in detail. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, will stand up and say that he doubled the number of staff in An Coimisiún Pleanála and he is not giving any more. That is the barrier the industry experts have cited to us in getting our offshore wind energy system online. The barriers are lack of staff in An Coimisiún Pleanála to undertake this scrutiny. It is not judicial reviews. It is not the climate Act. It is not environmental NGOs. It is a failure to address the substantive barriers to the delivery of offshore wind and of the wider electrification of our energy systems. The Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, and I have spoken already about something small that will not change the world. In plug-in solar, even something small such as that, Ireland is behind because there is not that effort to bring those concerned, whether ESB Networks, EirGrid and the Irish standards authority, together to bring about a solution to allow more people enjoy lower cost energy from these solutions. The Celtic interconnector, something that will guarantee significant energy security and enough electricity to support 450,000 households, is delayed by two years. These are the areas where the Government needs to focus. Instead, we have a grandiose project such as this. We have Members on the backbenches touting nuclear fuel. We need to focus on the areas where we can actually deliver and have a track record but where there are clear barriers to the rapid delivery of the electrification of our energy networks. I wish the same passion and determination were put into the changes that would allow us to create our own energy in Ireland as have been put into driving forward this Bill and other Bills that undermine our climate obligations. I will talk a little about the project itself because it is not going to deliver energy security in the short term. The best estimate we got in the committee was that it would take three and a half years - until 2030 - before this would be built, assuming there are no delays. There are few projects in this country where we can see that happening. It is going to cost €900 million in capital and running costs. This huge investment would pay for many of the solar panels Deputy Neville said he would love to see going up across the country. We have to remember that by the time the terminal is open, climate targets will be higher, our carbon budget will be far more constrained and our reliance on fossil fuels should be declining, not growing. However, through this Bill and the facility that will be created under it, we will lock ourselves even further into a continued fossil fuel reliance, which could last for decades. This is completely misaligned with the climate goals the country agreed to. We should not be planning further fossil fuel energy infrastructure at the same time as we are trying to move away from fossil fuels as a core national policy. This creates a real risk that when this terminal is created, our energy goals and climate policies will have moved on. By 2030 and 2031, we will be in a different place. Hopefully, some of that wind power will be feeding into our system, but we will have invested €900 million in this infrastructure. To take the example of Germany, in 2022, it invested €2.5 billion in LNG infrastructure. Since then, it has had to spend more than €4 billion extra in state aid to cover the losses, as these terminals' operating costs continue to rise. These rising costs can be attributed to Germany's decreased reliance on natural gas since the terminals were built. That question of having a stranded asset is not one that has been examined in sufficient detail. In years to come, there will be real questions raised about the wisdom of investing so much in a large piece of expensive infrastructure when our national policy is that we do not want to use this fuel any more. This Bill is a clear effort to undermine and weaken our climate law, in combination with the other three Bills I referred to earlier. I passionately believe in energy security for this country. I remember my parents talking to me about the late 1970s and the oil crisis in that period. Four times in my time in Dáil Éireann, our country has been struck by dramatic energy security incidents, generated by the wars in Ukraine and Iran. Those energy crises have impacted on families and caused misery and financial hardship all over the country. I passionately believe in delivering security of supply, but I am not convinced by the argument the Government is bringing forward. Tying ourselves to a polluting fossil fuel that has seen its price spike and its availability shrink in each of these energy fuel crises is not the solution to our security of supply. Security of supply for energy in Ireland is delivered by making our own renewable energy here in Ireland. That is where the focus of this Government's action, legislation and investment needs to be. Very importantly, the Minister and his civil servants, in creating policy, need to focus on getting through the blockages in our system. The industry groups supporting the electrification of our nation's energy systems are trying to get through those blockages. However, they are not getting help because the focus is on work like such as this, namely, legislation that requires a huge amount of work and is locking us into a system and energy source we need to move away from. I look forward to the opportunity to tease out in detail my objections and the objections of others to the Bill. I look forward to bringing forward meaningful solutions to some of the issues I have raised. I appeal to the Minister of State to speak to his colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, about the time allocated to this Bill. It is not acceptable to have two hours for Committee, Report and Remaining stages. It does not do his or any of our arguments justice. This is an important matter, and it deserves more than two hours.

I was going to say I welcome the Bill, but I do not welcome it; it is a necessary evil. Its purpose is to secure the provision of energy to this country in the long term, at a time when the provision of energy and resources to generate energy are tremendously volatile and precipitous in terms of our access to energy. I listened to Deputy O'Gorman say security of supply should be achieved by domestic generation. I would fully agree with that statement, but for the fact that we are not capable of generating everything we need on this island. Thankfully, we have access to the UK electricity market through the North-South interconnector, and I look forward to accessing mainland Europe electricity in 2028, through the Celtic interconnector, a 575 km undersea cable that will connect us to Brittany. When that is completed, we will have access to the electricity there. That will be an important part of building energy security for this country. Some of the electricity coming through the Celtic interconnector will come from electricity generated by nuclear power stations. I do not have a problem with that but I would distinguish myself from other Government backbenchers who were referred to earlier. I do not think nuclear is part of the solution to our problems here, by any stretch. For a start, the cost involved is enormous. Moreover, the time delivery for it is way beyond what we would need to put in clean solutions such as wind, solar and, hopefully, wave, which is not being used nearly enough. More importantly, the use of nuclear energy as a solution to the security of supply for Ireland would build up enormous problems for future generations, and I simply do not hold with that idea. I am not afraid of the conversation in that regard, but I do not think nuclear is part of the answer. I understand why this Bill is being brought forward. As I said, I consider it to be a necessary evil. The reason for providing for an LNG terminal is to secure a supply of gas, if it is required and the supply of gas from elsewhere ceased. However, I am still not happy about that. For example, I am not happy that there are no guarantees in this legislation regarding fracked gas that might come here as LNG. There are not, and there cannot be, because it would create all kinds of other difficulties. It is, of course, important to build resilience into our system but I wonder if we will have missed the boat by the time we do so in 2030. As of today, there is not a single operational offshore wind farm in this country. The Minister of State will agree that this is not just regrettable; it is disgraceful. I know the Arklow Bank wind farm has been decommissioned but may well come back into service in due course, with further applications and all the rest. I am aware of projects off the coast of my constituency. I welcome those and look forward to their operation but we are years away from seeing those generate electricity. We have other problems, including growing electricity demand. If the LNG terminal is not going to be available until 2030, as I understand it, that in itself creates a problem from the point of view of its real assistance in energy security for this country. I wonder about the efficacy of it in that regard. There is always a balance to be struck to meet the requirements of the State. As bad as this might be, it would be a thousand times worse if, in a couple of years' time, there were rolling blackouts on our electricity grid or people were not able to avail of electricity for their homes and businesses or, worse, for essential services. We must do everything we can, as a Government, State, country and body politic, to ensure we are putting in place resilience measures so that we can compensate if there is a problem in this regard. Security of supply is central. We should be moving towards becoming energy independent. That should the end point of all our energy goals. We have the natural resources to do it. We have the wind, and I am told we have the solar. Even though it might feel like it today, it does not feel like it on a cold Monday in November. The point is that the natural resources exist and if we are to develop wave technology and other renewable technologies, we can do that. I recognise there is a long lead-in to that, which is far too long, in my opinion. The blocking and delays of offshore wind projects, which are even less problematic than onshore wind projects, are unacceptable. That is the kind of thing that we should target. If we are going to use a slot for controversial legislation, let us do it for that instead of creating an LNG terminal. However, I recognise the policy objective behind it. There are other aspects of the Bill that I am a little unhappy with. The objections I have primarily relate to drafting. For example, at the end of the Bill, Part 7, section 38, creates a consequential amendment to the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992. This is something that I say about legislation all the time. If we expect legislation to be readable by ordinary citizens, the amendment should be contained in the amending section. Section 38 states that a section of the 1992 Act is amended by replacing paragraph (b) with the following words, which is no use to anybody reading this Bill when it comes law. They then have to go and get the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992 and read the two of them together to understand what this legislation is doing. It is a consistent disservice that we do in this House to the citizens of this country that we cannot, in amending a section, essentially repeal the old one and restate it in this Bill so that it is easily read by citizens. It would be an easy thing to do, yet we never, ever do it. This is, far and away, not the worst example. There have been more than a dozen Road Traffic (Amendment) Acts, for example. The 1961 Act, the primary Act, simply does not exist any more because it has been amended so many times, yet we have no consolidated Act. It is a point I make all the time because we would serve people much better if we were willing to actually engage with something that they could read. The other drafting points I wanted to make relate to the judicial review provisions in section 35 and elsewhere. The test for leave for a judicial review is amended in section 35(6). There is no need for that. We should allow the courts to do their job. Judicial review is a constitutional right that citizens have. We should not water that down. If they want to challenge it, let them challenge it. It is the same with the cost provisions in section 37(1). Why on earth would we need to put a cost provision in? The courts are managing that for themselves.

As Ireland prepares to assume the Presidency of the European Union, the question of energy security has rarely been more urgent or relevant. While we are making real progress on the development of renewables, we must also recognise the vulnerabilities that remain in our system. With the risk of disruption to gas supply, whether through geopolitical instability or hybrid attack, our critical infrastructure underlying the need for a strategic gas emergency reserve, and I support that in principle. The recent global energy shocks have exposed just how fragile energy systems can be and how dependent we are on imported fuels. While the current crisis may have eased, with petrol and diesel prices coming down at the pumps, it would be a mistake to assume that those risks have passed. The reality is that we are entering a more uncertain and volatile geopolitical environment and our domestic energy policy must reflect that. The Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy undertook pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of this Bill. We heard from a range of witnesses and had a pretty thorough debate about the merits of the facility. The clear conclusions from that process were that while reducing gas demand and scaling up renewables would significantly strengthen our position, those measures alone are not sufficient to fully address the energy security risks that we face. Ultimately, a strategic gas emergency reserve, implemented on a transitional basis only, and used only in the event of supply disruption, represents the most immediate and cost-effective way to enhance Ireland's energy resilience. Importantly, the committee was also clear that this reserve must not distort the market or lead to increased gas consumption in Ireland. It is an energy security measure only and should solely be seen as a bridge to maintaining greater gas security and resilience. I urge the Minister of State that the Government recognise the importance of this and ensure that this legislation remains focused on that purpose alone, and there are clear measures for decommissioning the facility, and a sunset clause, on the basis that it will not be with us in the long term. The debate also speaks to a more fundamental question about what energy mix we can expect to see in Ireland in the future. It is a topic that the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach knows comes up at the committee frequently. While we are rightly committed to a system predominantly powered by renewable energy, there will still be a need for dispatchable power. Renewable energy by its nature depends on the weather. While batteries are improving and can manage short-term changes in supply and demand, they do not and will not, in the short term, be able to sustain electricity supply over long periods. Yesterday at the committee, we discussed nuclear power. Lots of people have been getting very excited about nuclear power, but the hard reality, as we heard yesterday, is that it will be at least 2040 and most likely 2050 before we can get it. It is very expensive. We have no regulatory regime in Ireland and no legislation to support it. Much of the technology is unproven. Small modular reactors, SMRs, have been talked about for so long. There are 64 projects in various guises at the moment worldwide. Only two are in operation to demonstrate the technology. It is just not ready at the moment. Investment in our grid will alleviate some of the issues relating to power, providing a level of flexibility and interconnection with other markets which currently does not exist. Plug-in solar, as the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy Heneghan, has mentioned numerous times, and as mentioned by Deputy O'Gorman, is another thing we should do to distribute the load. Without these transformations, the ambition of a renewables-led system cannot be realised. However, even with the grid upgraded, Ireland will continue to require reliable, dispatchable baseload power. For the foreseeable future, that role will continue to be met primarily by gas. I wish it was different, but that is the reality. The strategic gas emergency reserve is a reflection of that reality. It is a pragmatic and necessary step to ensure that, in the event of a severe disruption, we have the capacity to protect households, businesses, and critical services. When we looked at that issue, community groups came in from the environs where the facility is to be built. It is important that they are kept up to speed about what is happening. They have all sorts of concerns, from health to impact on the local community. It is important that the Government engages with those communities and brings them along on this journey as this facility is developed.

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.

It is funny, for all the talk about speaking rights, to see a lot of Opposition not turning up to speak. This is a giant infrastructure project. I am not here to wreck this Bill - energy has always been a priority for me, having studied it before I had the honour of being elected – but we really need to look at it. I understand we need energy security. If, God forbid, there was an issue with one of the interconnectors or there was an energy disaster, critical services, hospitals, homes and people who really need it would lose access to power. That needs to be addressed. A more accurate cost-benefit analysis of this project should be carried out and compared with the option of decentralising our grid with more distribution system operators, DSOs, energy sharing and battery storage. I welcome the recent announcements on storage and how it is being looked at. I held a meeting in the audiovisual room with Energy Storage Ireland which was attended by a lot of Deputies and Senators. It was looking at changing the current regulations in the area. I second what a lot of Deputies have said about data centres paying the same price as domestic energy users. Possibly, they should pay more. One way they could reduce the cost would be by using on-site renewable-generated electricity. I hope my Bill will enable them and other high-energy users to do so. The €900 million cost of building the facility could be put into more renewables or enabling people to use plug-in solar. I thank the Department for publishing the consultation on plug-in solar from 2024. I read the five reviews – I think it was EIA, Bord Gáis, ESB, EirGrid and ESBN and the Electricity Association – and a lot of them were very happy with it so I do not understand why the Department was saying it would be dangerous. The UK made a recent announcement on plug-in solar. We should run a pilot scheme and allow people in Fingal or Dublin City Council or any other county council with new-build social and affordable housing to have plug-in solar installed and show the savings to the State and the council through these systems. Some 3% or 4% of German electricity is generated from plug-in solar systems. That is no small feat for a system that can cost €300 or €400 from a Lidl or Aldi and the person can take it with them if they move. That is something that can really help. There is €900 million for this project. I know a plug-in solar system cannot power a hospital but an on-site best battery system which was charged up at night rate from the grid, stored for those emergencies at multiple locations in these systems, is another option we should be examining. We could also store HVOs for hospitals and use them for generators if there was to be an energy disaster. We are putting ourselves in a clear demand response. LNG cannot be stored for long periods in this system. It needs to be used. I welcome the work that has gone in by the Department. I also want to acknowledge EirGrid and ESB Networks - I generally do not do so but they do deserve some credit - as renewable sources supplied 49% of Ireland’s electricity. I know the hard-working men and women in these companies are doing the best they can. Our grid was very old and they had to do everything they could but, as the Minister of State knows, in this House we rarely congratulate people. It is something we should do more in politics. The CRU has approved up to €18.9 billion in green investment, which is a genuine step. However a recent article said it would not be able to take on external staff. It needs to take on external staff because it needs to be a regulator and to do its job. I welcome the engagement I have had with it and the Department. I said I would not go over five minutes but now I have got going. Serious engineers are doing serious work. Deputy Tóibín mentioned the interconnectors. We are on an island which is politically divided, sadly. That is something I would love to see change during my time in this House. When that happens we will have people in a single government on this island of Ireland. However, when it comes to the interconnectors, we are seeing repeated cases of nimbyism where local politicians object to an overhead cable. I understand Deputy Tóibín referred to undergrounding the cables but induction means it will not be viable for long distances. I understand that it might be used in parts and it might be brilliant in some cases. Farmers should have the right to ask for the cables to go underground on their land rather than above it. We were told this reserve is needed to bring about energy independence but I would again ask how adding one more single point of failure brings more energy independence and security. Surely multiple points of failure would bring that? If, God forbid, there was an attack on our energy infrastructure, on one of the interconnectors, for example, surely having one large LNG terminal would make it a big bullseye for someone who wants to take out our energy infrastructure. Multiple underground energy storage units would be energy independence and security in my opinion. Maybe the Government is doing that and it just does not want me to say that on the record of the House. On ports, Ireland has only 44 ha of planned offshore renewable energy space. Belfast has a backlog of bookings and is the only port suitable for large scale ORE. We are missing an opportunity. I have welcomed the investment into Cork Port many times and I also welcome the work the Department is doing with port marshalling to allow more investment into port. I will have two amendments to the Bill which I look forward to discussing. I have said before that Churchill tried before to limit coal coming into Ireland to force de Valera’s hand. The UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, resigned recently. Looking at the polls, we do not know who will be in power in UK after the next election. Making our country dependent on an interconnector when we do not control the energy coming from the other side is not energy independence. I know this would but I am talking on the broader scheme. The Bill should be amended to include a clause to re-examine that. I support the principle of the Bill. It is a necessary evil, as Deputy Ward said. A lot of work could have been done by a previous government, when the Green Party was in coalition, to prevent this. I can only do what I can do when I am in this House since my election. I ask the Minister and the Department to look at my amendments and consider the discussion I hope to have about the future-proofing of our grid. I will ask once more about plug-in solar. I welcome that we are having discussion on it at the climate and energy committee. It is a quick fix, it is low cost and will save people in the constituency I represent money. I welcome the engagement the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, have had. That only took me eight minutes.

In line with the Deputy’s comments, I congratulate him on being so succinct in his points. He managed to do it in a relatively quick time. I will make a number of general comments. We have had a good debate across a lot of areas, many of which are not part of or subject to this legislation. This Bill is the first stage in addressing the energy security deficit that we have. It is an enabling piece of legislation to allow for the procurement of the necessary permissions. It sets out a timely way to do that by setting aside certain pieces of existing legislation in order to get it done at the haste it needs to happen. Everybody recognises, and there has been a broad consensus, that we need energy security. Others have pivoted to saying what we should be doing is addressing the renewables issue, which of course we are. Bringing forward this piece of legislation in no way distracts from the Government's agenda to move towards and reach our climate change targets in relation to the reduction of CO2 emissions, the electrification of our economy and generation of that electricity from renewable resources within our own ambit. It is the right thing to do from a climate change perspective. It is the right thing to do from an energy security perspective. It is the right thing to do for our citizens and businesses into the future, from the perspective of competitiveness. It guarantees us costs. It allows us to reduce costs and not to be vulnerable to the kinds of shocks that everybody has talked about. I know we are in a political Chamber but if you strip away a lot of the politics, there is little between any of us in this House about where we need to go. It is the case that we are all aligned on renewables but to get renewables at scale and reach the capacity to power our economy when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, we need something else to power our electricity generation. We will require greater amounts of that as we move heating, transport and more components of our economy onto the grid and we need to invest in our grid. We are doing that. I know there is some criticism that we do not have any turbines in the water at the moment. We were ahead of others, and we have fallen behind for sure. However, the plans we have in place and the projects at different stages of permissions were not mentioned at all. We have to work them through, and we expect by 2031 or 2032 to have between 3 GW and 5 GW of electricity generated from offshore renewable sources. We are at about 8 GW on land at the minute, between solar and wind. That is a significant quantum of electricity. The previous Government changed the strategy for the development of offshore renewables. Rather than having it being developer led, identifying sites and responding to various options, we now have a planned approach in place. The DMAP for an area off the south-east coast of Ireland has worked well. The bid went through last December. Some 900 MW of electricity has been procured and that is now working its way through the planning system. The State has derisked projects like that by capturing the subsea data and providing it to the bidders. There was a caustic comment about the number of conferences we have had. I have participated in those. I have travelled to encourage international developers to participate in those auctions. That is to the long-term benefit of Ireland. There is a recognition among the large companies that take on these projects that Ireland is a good place to invest, and they are following through on that. There were three or four bidders for the auction off the south-east coast. They are still interested in Ireland and there are three other opportunities in the same designated zone, which will be going to auction over the coming months and year. In addition, the State has undertaken a national designation for such sites, and we will have all of those sites identified by the end of 2027. That strategy is working towards our commitment out to 2040, so we will have identified all the necessary sites to generate an additional 15 GW of electricity. That will far surpass our domestic demand. It opens up opportunities if we can get the right interconnectors in place. We have the Celtic one coming on board. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, on behalf of the Government, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Spain to look at the possibility of interconnection there too. We are travelling at significant pace and scale now to reach our renewable targets. We are also developing a strategy for hydrogen because we identified that getting to 2050 and reaching net zero, particularly with regard to our electricity generation, will not be possible without hydrogen or some component thereof, be it ammonia or whatever. Ultimately, if we get to a point where we are able to use the electricity for the purpose of generating hydrogen at times where the demand is not on the grid, we will have effective storage of clean energy in a molecule format that can be stored. It will either be that or through ammonia, whatever is the safest method of doing it as technologies develop. That ensures you are not grounding electrons or doing dispatch downs. Some seem to suggest, from a critical perspective, that the Government was not talking a strategic approach but of course we are. We are planning it now in a long-term strategic way, recognising where our targets are and what we have to achieve. In the here and now, today, and beyond 2030 as we head towards 2040, we will still need fossil fuels to fill that gap in our energy mix. It would be foolhardy of any administration of whatever hue in this House to somehow walk away from its responsibility to provide insofar as it can a back-up storage plan in the less likely but still possible event of some disruption to the two gas interconnectors out of Scotland. For years gone by, we were drawing a significant amount of our gas from the Corrib gas field. As that is petering out, and the level of gas coming from it is reducing significantly, we have to move on this. Frankly, I think we should have moved sooner. That would be my criticism. This should have been in place. We are doing it now. Others then suggested we were baking in or locking ourselves into fossil fuel infrastructure. Had we allowed some of the commercial operators who sought to do this to build a gas terminal, then yes we would be locking ourselves in. This is a mobile piece of kit. There will be some hardware on the ground but, in essence, it is a ship storing gas connected to our pipeline. When the Government gets to a point that it no longer requires that level of storage, the asset moves on. A lot of questions were raised today that do not really relate to this Bill. This is just about the permission and setting aside certain elements of existing planning legislation to get the fast-tracked approach through. Another Bill will come forward later this year that will effectively be the operational component, and which will address the costs and the kinds of commitments that have been sought with regard to the length of time, usage, access for private capital and all of that. All of those elements will be in a later Bill. The issues were raised and there are amendments. I have had a quick look at them and have been briefed on a number of them. They are more likely to relate to the next Bill rather than this Bill. Some of the concepts and discussions we were having today and the issues raised have more application in the operational piece of legislation rather than just on the planning side. Deputy Whitmore raised a number of issues she was concerned were not in this Bill, and I want to assure her and many others that those elements will be addressed or, if they are not, Members can discuss them with us. We will happily look at them. I obviously make no commitment in advance of a piece of legislation that has yet to be published. The heads of Bill probably still have to go to Government to clear but we have a broad plan here and we want to implement it.