Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Regarding Mr. Brady's last point, the UK has apparently just signed a memorandum of understanding on the North Seas countries' offshore grid initiative, which the Dutch Government introduced last June.

The fact that it did it in November is not insignificant. It will not sell electricity to Singapore, India or effect any of their mad-capped notions about trading globally. It will have to be integrated into the European electricity market. Otherwise, it faces an incredibly expensive electricity future. Its wholesale prices are twice the European average. For us and our connection, we need to be looking not just at the French interconnection but also at additional interconnectors into the UK which it seems would be funded by the Connecting Europe Facility, or Juncker's fund, depending on what happens in the Brexit negotiations.

My concern is that we are not talking to the UK Department, yet we are waiting from for the UK Prime Minister's gun to go off. We should be in there now and getting a deal done on greater interconnection. The UK is not going to leave. It cannot work its energy system in isolation. It will also be gas dependent on Norwegian, Dutch, Algerian, Russian and other gas. It will not go on a solo run in energy. We should work with them still because it is in our interests for it to connect into north west Europe. It has signed up to that in the north seas offshore agreement two months ago. Therefore, we should not just be speaking to the French but to the British as well.