Mr. Gabriel D'Arcy:

Deputy Colreavy asked about the board, and I can confirm that to the best of my knowledge there is no former politician or Member of the Houses of the Oireachtas on the board. Outside of the members who are on the board through the worker participation Act, it consists largely of business people of one kind or another.
Senator Keane spoke about factual information, renewable information and so forth. I totally agree with her. We have seen that even today in this very good discussion, and I acknowledge many of the contributions from the different sides. There is a need for an evidence-based approach to this, where we get the facts and put them down to the best of our ability, notwithstanding that many of these are interpretations. The facts are there, but how those facts are interpreted is what comes into opinion forming.
With regard to designs for wind turbines, in general there has been a good deal of development in turbine design, both for small turbines suited to more domestic environments and for the larger turbines proposed. All of the companies will continually look at turbine technology design in terms of scale, efficiency, noise and overall impact.
On the conventional power plants, if we take the island of Ireland without any interconnectivity, 100% backup will be required for wind energy. The same would apply for 100 islands the size of Ireland. Each of the islands will need its own renewable energy capacity and its own backup. It is when these 100 islands start interconnecting that the efficiencies are achieved, particularly if we look at it on a European basis, which is what is driving much of policy here. There is a European view on this in terms of bringing in nuclear power from those areas that have nuclear energy and that are very good at producing it, such as France and Britain; bringing in renewable energy from those areas in Europe that are particularly good at wind energy, such as Ireland and Scotland; bringing in bioenergy from those areas that have scale and capability; and bringing in solar energy from those areas in southern Europe and north Africa to allow them to contribute. That is the concept of the overarching super-grid. It is not only on production, because another important point that has not been mentioned is usage and getting smart grids and smart devices in situthat are much more responsive to the fluctuations occurring on the grid. That must be taken into account as well.
Deputy Colreavy mentioned the Green Paper on energy. I totally accept that. There have been a number of White Papers and Green Papers at various stages-----