Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the representatives and thank them for appearing before the committee. The presentation was not what one would have assumed. The topic for discussion was the basis for putting the North-South interconnector underground but that was not the presentation which was a restatement of the need for a single energy market on the island. There are very few people who do not understand the need for a single energy market on the island; I certainly do. We would be damn poor neighbours if we did not. If there are energy problems in any part of the island and there is capacity in another part to help address that issue, we should help, provided we are not being disadvantaged in so doing. I see the sense behind the proposal. I would go so far as to say that if we have additional capacity and there is an EU market, we should be looking at that, again provided the consumer in Ireland is not being screwed in that regard.

Perhaps the representatives are not the people who should be answering the following question. If the technical advice is that two converter stations are needed and the representatives say the space between those two converters must be a sterile area and if a major data centre was coming on stream that it would not be possible to have a connection to it, why can the two converter stations not be located in the same place on the Border so that there is no sterile area? Would that not permit undergrounding in both jurisdictions and minimise the sterile area? Perhaps the representatives are not the people to whom I should address this question but I think it is a question that needs to be asked. The representatives also say that the overall cost of the interconnector is €286 million. Is that in sterling or euro?