Mr. Peter Harte:

If I understand the question, the concern is that we are putting all our eggs into one basket and that wind requires a 1 MW for 1 MW backup. Any power system, like Ireland's 15 years ago, requires a great deal of backup plant to make up for the fact that sometimes some plant is unavailable, and, more importantly, for the fact that there is a variation in demand between the peak in the winter, typically in December, and the lowest demand in the summer. The numbers in Ireland at present suggest there is a peak demand on the island of approximately 6,000 MW and we have 10,000 MW of generation installed to meet that. Ten years ago, the plant would have cycled day and night with fluctuations in load. More recently, it is cycling up and down with wind. Crucially, however, not one new megawatt has had to be built because of the new megawatts of wind. Over the last ten years we have built over 2,000 MW of new wind and not one new megawatt of conventional generation was required to back those up, simply because they were already there for the purpose of backing up what was previously a day-night fluctuation. I believe that is quite safe.

On the question of putting one's eggs in one basket, if Ireland were not to pursue a wind energy strategy, it would certainly be putting its eggs into one energy policy basket, namely, imported gas. Without wind energy, Ireland was heading to 80% to 90% dependency on gas. Energy policy in Ireland suggests we will go to 40% wind, and that will remove some of the dependency on imported gas.