Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will forget that issue, therefore.

I welcome the bilateral discussions with the United Kingdom because the key to exploiting the massive resources available to us is exporting energy supplies. We need interconnectors and the British need green energy. However, the two Governments face certain challenges in drawing up a memorandum of understanding on energy exports. I am from County Mayo which has substantial wind energy resources. While I was on the local authority, I chaired the committee that developed the renewable energy strategy. Even taking NHAs, SACs, housing and visual amenities out of the equation and removing wind farms from these locations, we still came up with more than 20,000 MW of wind energy in County Mayo. While we were never going to develop that level of output, it gives us an idea of what we could do if we were to get our export model right. It is all very well that the British need green energy, but we need to consider a royalty system similar to that in place for oil and gas, although we have an unsatisfactory situation in the case of the Corrib gas field.

Who will pay for the infrastructure, particularly if Britain is to benefit in achieving its renewable energy targets by virtue of wind energy supplies from our shores? We need a deal in place in that regard. Whatever payment the generator receives for the sale of power, an intrinsic part of the arrangement must be a royalties system in order that in the future the people who must live beside this infrastructure will know that royalties are being paid and that the power lines beside their homes are being used to export energy supplies. They should be aware that these royalties are going into the national coffers. We must go at this issue in a big way. We must be massively ambitious in this regard.

On another point-----