Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

That is a matter beyond which we have control. Other key energy policy drivers include the fundamental changes in the global gas supply market, pressures on the availability and cost of capital for the capital intensive energy sector, whether State owned or private sector and changes in energy technology. As a country that imports almost 90% of our energy requirements, we are acutely aware of these challenges and the real opportunity that developing our indigenous energy resources provides. Given the dramatic change to our own and, Europe's, economic fortunes, now is a good time to evaluate our energy policy directions.

Towards the end of 2011, the international energy agency carried out its four-yearly review of Irish energy policy. The review includes a detailed assessment of the efficiency of the Irish electricity and gas sectors, taking full account of the EU regulatory context for these sectors. I look forward to receiving its assessment of our energy policy in a few months. This analysis will feed into a review of the existing 2007 energy White Paper that my Department will carry out over the coming months in consultation with stakeholders and with a view to publishing during this year a new energy policy framework for 2012-2030.

As part of our energy and climate change 2020 European commitments, Ireland has been set a legally binding target of 16% of all energy consumed to be from renewable sources by 2020. At national level, we achieved this target by delivering 40% in the electricity sector, 12% in the heat sector and 10% in the transport sector. In response to Senator Keane's question, we are reasonably comfortable that we will achieve the target for the electricity sector but there will be difficulties achieving the targets for the heat and transport sectors. The combined delivery across these three sectors is consistent with delivering our European target of 16% of all energy from renewable sources.

In the electricity sector, while we have seen good progress in recent years, moving from 5% renewable electricity in 2005 to around 15% renewable electricity now, we still have a long way to go to ensure that we reach our 2020 target of 40% renewable electricity. The achievements in this area to date are reflected in the significant reduction in emission levels from electricity between 1990 and 2009. While earlier improvements in this area were primarily due to replacing older, less efficient generating plant on the system, it is clear that in later years the growing deployment of renewable energy has increasingly contributed to the overall emissions reduction. I am confident that Ireland has the capability to achieve its domestic renewable electricity targets from the onshore wind projects already in the existing Gate processes, despite the many difficulties being encountered and the undoubted challenges which remain for a number of projects, including Senator Daly's harrier hen.