Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No. The report was only seriously engaged in during the summer and will not be published until the end of this year. There will not be any push in the interim until we get that report and member states have had an opportunity to examine it.

No primary biofuels are being processed in Ireland and all secondary biofuels are from used cooking oil and tallow. The biggest and most significant plant is in Wexford, which I visited recently. It is increasing employment, has almost 50% of the market in Ireland and proposes to grow further.

The dispute in Europe is that there is something of a rethink about the correctness of using primary biofuels and a realisation that the emphasis should move towards secondary biofuels. There is a bigger concern in the developing world. The committee may have been subject to representations from NGOs that know what is happening in some African countries, where huge tracts of land are being cleared. Big transnational corporations from Europe have bought up land for the production of primary biofuels. It is land that could otherwise be used for food production, so there quite a lot of concern about that. The Lithuanian proposal is probably the best that can be achieved in the current circumstances because opinion is divided. During the Irish EU Presidency, when I chaired such Council meetings, I strongly supported the NGOs' arguments. In this particular regard, the NGOs know what they are talking about and state that it is having a negative effect on food production in certain African countries.

On the other hand, some member states have put huge investment into this area in the expectation that they would have certainty for some years ahead. As a result, the 7% figure in the Lithuanian proposal will not meet the target of the NGOs, which have set their cap at 5%. We will support the Lithuanian proposal, however, which is likely to be as good as we will get at this time.

We do participate in the nuclear debate and express the Irish position. The debate is topical for a number for reasons. Post-Fukushima, the decisions that have been made in Europe are highly significant. For example, nobody anticipated the decisions made in Germany and their implications. We have seen what is going on in Britain, which has been engaged for some time in regenerating its nuclear power facilities. The UK has encountered a great many obstacles and difficulties, and has only recently entered into a contract with the French state company, EDF, to construct a plant at Hinkley Point. That is going ahead. We expressed the Irish position, however, and are not alone in doing so. Member states such as Austria take a stronger view than ours. There are also issues concerning the EU safety directive, including nuclear liability and stress tests, in all of which we have an interest. We express those views when the issue is debated at Council level.

As regards energy infrastructure, the debate on the completion of the internal energy market has been focused on the design of the market, as well as regulatory questions and other difficult technical issues. The question of infrastructure and building interconnectors between member states is still some distance into the future. However, one cannot have an integrated market in practice without that interconnection. We have recently strengthened our interconnection to the neighbouring island with a 500 MW interconnector that was commissioned just over a year ago between Wales and County Meath. That is a valuable piece of infrastructure which is cited in Europe as an example of what should be happening between member states. If we are to develop an export capacity exploiting our indigenous resource for the purposes of creating employment and bringing a revenue stream into Ireland by trading green energy with the neighbouring island - and, who knows, maybe further afield in future - then we will have to improve the transmission system. In any event, the transmission system must be continually refurbished to be fit for purpose. The concerns raised by members of this committee are the same across Europe. We have a State agency of acknowledged international competence, which is charged with the delivery of a safe and secure electricity supply system in Ireland. That agency must have regard to safety issues and best practice, but I accept that it is not without controversy.

In recent discussions with EirGrid, and conscious of the position adopted by this committee, I took the opportunity to state that there ought to be an extension of the public consultation period for the Grid Link project. I expressed my own support for that view. As members of the committee will know, the public consultation period has now been extended to 7 January 2014 in order to give community groups and all citizens an opportunity to make their input. We will see how it progresses.