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

It has to do with the efficient delivery of electricity, which is the first consideration. It is also a cornerstone of the North's energy security policy. I was asked whether we could debate these issues at more leisure now than when we were in the red hot heat of the boom. The answer is "Yes", but I would strip out the North-South requirement as being an exception to that. We need to get on with that part as soon as may be.

On fracking, there have been new technologies since man started being inventive. Some scared the horses at the time but came to be essential to the way we lived as civilisation evolved. There is nothing unwise or unusual in taking expert advice on a new technology and whether it is safe or threatens the environment. This is all that we are doing. Our Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, is staffed with experts and can take advices that it believes it might need of a professional and technical nature. The EPA is to produce an expert report for the Government on this technology. We have not gone any further. There is no hydraulic fracturing under way in the Republic. What the previous Government did amounted to nothing more than desktop surveys. In any event, as a member country of the EU where this subject inevitably arises from time to time, Ireland needs to have a position. Therefore, it is important that our position be informed by the best scientific and technical advice available.

I agree with Deputy Colreavy in that anything that despoils the natural beauty of the more scenic areas of this country is unacceptable, but it takes something like the Ukrainian crisis to bring home to those who sleep easy in their beds at night - in the conviction that when they plug in the kettle in the morning it will boil and when they turn on the light it will work - the fact that we cannot be cavalier about such matters. Security of supply is an issue in the world in which we live, and if it is an issue for those plugging in kettles in the morning, it is a far greater one for large energy users, especially the kinds of major company investing in Ireland today. The notion of an outage of five minutes would be unthinkable and would do immense damage to the industrial strategy being pursued by the country. We have to be careful not to take security of supply for granted. This means diversifying our sources and exploiting our indigenous resources as best we can. We have done this effectively in the case of wind, but we must continue to keep up with technology.