Mr. Patrick Swords:

There has been a pause and that has been recognised by the scientific community, even by the scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unfortunately, the models that are used to predict a catastrophic global warming scenario have been wrong. There has not been a rise in temperatures in the past 16 years. We need to look at all this. There is huge disquiet that there is a catastrophic scenario and that scenario is deeply controversial. We can deal with the issue offline at some other time and I do not want to go into the matter.

As regards alternatives, I have already stated that we have a good generation system. We invested heavily in it between 1999 and 2012 so we are good to go for 20 to 30 years in advance and we do not have to rush into anything. We do not need to throw out the good power station that we have and build a nuclear power station but we should look at all of the options and find the right one. My approach is that the process should be done correctly and that is what the convention is about. The convention is not against nuclear energy and I am not against nuclear energy. The convention, as was said, is not against wind energy. There may be circumstances in which wind is suitable. Wind energy does not make sense when one looks at it from an engineering perspective and from the perspective of the large-scale roll-out of a scheme.

One reason it does not make sense is because it causes inefficiencies in other power stations. We have some of the most modern gas-fired stations. They are the most efficient stations in the world because they are 55% efficient at full load. That means that when we put in two units of gas we get more than one unit of electricity. If we ramp them back to less than 50%, they fall off a cliff and by the time we are down to 40%, we are down to percentages in the 30s in terms of efficiencies, burning three units of gas to get one unit of electricity. The combustion gases - the pollutants - increase by a factor of three when we throttle them back. Therefore, when one operates at one third of the load, one puts out the same amount of carbon monoxide and nitric oxide pollutants as one would if the station had a full load. That is not a sensible way of doing things so we must look at it from an engineering perspective and analyse the whole thing properly.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland's report has ignored the fact that these inefficiencies occur on the grid. Despite this, the REFIT for financing wind farms gives the wind operator €67 and gives the company €10. They take it because of the extra balancing costs and the extra inefficiencies they incur. At the same time we ignore the inefficiencies in our emissions calculations. We need to look very carefully. As we put in more renewables, the inefficiencies increase on the grid so it is a diminishing return with wind energy.

There were 11 sources of renewables identified in the directive. There has never been any consideration of technology alternatives in Ireland, and that is a legal binding from the Commissioner for Environmental Information. We just ended up with 90% wind. I spent 180 days working in Croatia between 2008 and 2009 getting the country ready for membership. Croatia joined in July and brought in its national renewable energy action plan in October. It has the same size of a population and relatively the same land mass as Ireland but it ruled out the large-scale deployment of wind because it was too expensive and too much of it would be imported. Instead, it went looking at agricultural sources such as biogas, etc.

For hydro power to work in a country, nature must do one a favour. If one was located between Serbia and Romania, where the River Danube is massive and bursts through the mountains, one could barely just generate enough electricity for Ireland. We only have the River Shannon, from which we get 80 MW on full flow, but we need between 2,000 MW and 5,000 MW so hydro power is not going to work.

We have too much slurry going into our waters. It is correct that biogas is not cheap, but it provides a steady electricity load. A rough rule of thumb calculation is that we have enough slurry - agricultural waste - to probably squeeze out 100 MW - 400 MW is the figure for 200 wind turbines - but it would give a steady load. We have waste to energy plants into which we have not tapped. We only have one working. Some 50% use renewables into which we could tap. We have options for heating systems with ground source pumps for heating communities which are not on the natural gas grid. We have biomass we could use to generate. However, the key aspect is that we have three modern ready-to-go peat-fired stations which would use biomass, wood chips or whatever else. They will need no modifications. We also have the Moneypoint plant, our coal fired station, which could easily be converted, as has been done in the United Kingdom, to using wood chips. We are going to import massive quantities of cables, turbines, steel and plastic to build all of this. If we were to import wood chips for our existing power stations, we would achieve the same renewables target at less cost and not blight the countryside with this investment. There are plenty of alternatives; we just have to go back and follow the procedure, as the United Nations has told us, and assess them.

I refer to the statutory guidelines. I am a German speaker and have worked in Germany where I dealt with planners. The statutory German noise regulations are very stringent. They date back to 1998 and everything hangs off them. The Germans recognise that they are insufficient to deal with the swish from wind turbines. When I compare the turbines which are being approved in planning here with the existing German noise guidelines and how they are assessed, there are many places where there are 20 to 30 houses within the zone of influence of a wind turbine which would rule out that planning development in Germany as not being compliant with the existing noise regulations which the Germans know are inadequate.

We need to look at all of these issues. There is no panic or rush. We should turn 180° and review everything.