Mr. Mike Quinn:

I thank Deputy Stanley and will respond to his question on compressed natural gas, CNG. As Mr. Brady pointed out Ervia is in the process of rolling out some CNG terminals across the country. The first one is actually in Dublin Port and it should be coming on stream in the first quarter of 2018. We are waiting for the Commission for Regulation of Utilities in Ireland, CRU, to give the safety certificate. The second terminal will be on the M7 and under what is called Project Causeway, there will be up to 14 stations in place by 2020.

Our plan is to roll out 70 stations by 2027. It has got an investment of €100 million. That will supply fuel to about 5,000 commercial vehicles. To put it in perspective, there are approximately 80,000 commercial vehicles currently on the road in Ireland today. It can have a major impact. If we converted more than 50% of the commercial fleet, that is buses and trucks to CNG, on fuel savings alone it would save approximately €524 million over diesel and an emission saving of 270,000 tonnes of CO2. If we use renewable gas instead of CNG, that saving grows to 1.225 million tonnes of CO2. It is very significant.

It is not as if we have to invent this technology. This technology is already being deployed. There are 24 million CNG powered vehicles globally so it is not something we have to invent ourselves. We will roll out existing technology. The reason it will take time is that we have to become used to rolling out the CNG refuelling stations and the other major challenge up to now has been getting right hand drive vehicles. A number of firms have signed up, including a waste company in County Clare is in the process of converting its waste fleet and as of Monday, 26 February, Bord na Móna will start to convert the first ten trucks to CNG as well. It will gather traction in the next number of years.

The Deputy asked about the role of the semi-State companies. I think the semi-State companies have a significant role to play in using biogas and biomass. GNI has a big programme in terms of rolling out the support infrastructure for biogas. We talked about the first injection point in Kildare, a second injection point should be going for planning permission in Mitchelstown and we hope to have ten to 12 anaerobic digestion plants generating gas that we can inject into a central agreed connection point. GNI's role will be to provide CNG powered transport to collect the gas from the network of anaerobic digestion plants and then inject the gas directly into the grid. We are also going to operate the Green Gas Certificate programme, which we hope will be approved by the third quarter. We should be in a position to start providing those green gas certificates of origin for the gas injections. We have a very significant role to play in that. We have identified a series of networks right across the country where we will build out these injection points