Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Our Department has been engaged with the new owners. I am going down for the official handover which is coming about in the next couple of weeks. It is a positive development. The new owners are committed to the site and its operation and we have engaged with them at departmental level. We will probably get the opportunity to talk directly to them when we go down and visit. It is important to remember that since 23 June 2016, everything has to be viewed in a very different light. We are in a very different world now, particularly from an energy and energy security perspective. We need to look again at issues such as Whitegate and potential liquefied natural gas, LNG, sites in the country in the context of the fact that much of our reserves up to now have been stored offshore and in the UK. The British exit from the European Union will have implications for us. We are actively engaged on all those issues and the full implications of Brexit. We still believe there will be very close co-operation with the UK on the energy portfolio. Last Saturday I was in Carrington, outside Manchester, where the ESB has made significant investment in a new power station that went live on Monday morning. It will power 1 million homes in the UK. There will continue to be close co-operation between both Governments and jurisdictions. We have to be conscious of the new era we are in. I look forward to meeting the new owners of Whitegate in the next couple of weeks.