Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This organisation, Wind Aware Ireland, submitted a detailed report that it had produced challenging the costs and the reduction in carbon emissions as a result of the current proposal. It is a counterargument to the general thinking that it is all efficient and is reducing our CO2 emissions. The report contains useful information on the substation in County Laois. The ESB and EirGrid are not audited by this committed. The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General sent me a note on that which we will circulate. They are not audited by us and so are not under our remit. They are subject to appear before the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment. That committee considered this matter previously and decided not to take up the issue because it felt it was substantially a planning issue relating to the particular site.

However, I wrote to the Sustainability Energy Authority of Ireland asking if it had a role in it. It replied that it had none. That is in private correspondence to me. I propose that we formally write to the CRU, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities in Ireland, which was formerly the Commission for Energy Regulation, with that report asking for a detailed observation on the report and its views on any role or function it has regarding that electricity substation in County Laois. As the regulator, the CRU may have a role as it approves funding for capital projects, how much of those capital costs can be passed on to the customer and the financing of it. It has to give regulatory approval.

The regulator is our best option in this particular case, so we will do that and come back to the matter. It is mainly to the regulator we are writing, but we will also circulate the previous note prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General's office regarding EirGrid and the ESB. It will be of benefit to the committee. We will come back to this.