Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the Celtic interconnector, it is great news that we have the commission grant and that there is €345 million for Ireland. That is a great development and very much to be welcomed. I assume that the Celtic interconnector will give us security of supply and also help with decarbonisation. I presume that is the two-pronged outcome. As a Border person who wants to see every form of North-South co-operation grow, and ultimately grow into a unified State, I am also firmly in support of maintaining the all-island energy market. There is no challenge to that. The North-South interconnector comes into play in a huge way there. I have no intention of going through all the technical issues. There are people who argued that it could be undergrounded efficiently and the witnesses' argument was that this would be difficult from the point of view of bringing in renewables and that of cost. This is not the correct forum to go back over all that and it is not the agenda today. However, I have been led to believe that technologies are evolving all the time. Do the witnesses see technological developments and innovation that might change what they have argued in the past in respect of taking the renewables into the grid and in respect of the overall cost? Is technology moving there? If it were, the inference is obvious in terms of what it would be right to do.

In respect of SSE, I am interested in the whole area of offshore wind farms. They get over a lot of the societal issues and populist difficulties that may arise in certain instances. Where I come from in Cavan, we have had an extraordinarily good relationship with the wind farm and the wind industry. There has not been the popular uprising against them because they were a supplementary income for small farmers in the area through leasing the land for the turbines. It has actually worked very well. There is a good community dividend and there are no issues, thankfully, as of yet. The wave energy would get over any community difficulty. I would be interested to hear a comment on the economics of offshore wind energy. Does SSE see a big future there? Are offshore wind farms ultimately superior and what is the difference? Can we get greater power there? I am interested purely as a layperson. I am sure the people watching would be similarly interested in the contrast between wind farms on land and offshore wind farms. Wave energy is not on the agenda. I have heard it said that the potential for Ireland in wave energy is almost equivalent to what oil was in Norway some years ago. I do not know if that is outside the witnesses' brief but I would interested in a comment on it at any rate.

I wanted to comment on the gas networks. Mr. O'Sullivan will be aware of the good news in Cavan that we are very proud of. I raised it in the Seanad this morning. It concerns Virginia International Logistics, a major haulage company. I am not going to go into this in depth. The company has become the first haulier in Ireland to complete a zero carbon heavy goods vehicle delivery to Europe. The trucks were fuelled by compressed renewable gas, also known as bio compressed natural gas. While we congratulate the Cole family and Virginia International Logistics, Mr. O'Sullivan might comment on the potential of this to become the norm. I would like a comment on the economics around that. Can it become profitable for haulage companies to make that transition? Would they need support in so doing?

Could Mr. O'Sullivan explain to me as a layperson the degree to which the use of gas is decarbonised, the degree to which there is still a carbon footprint in the use of gas and the distinction between this form of gas and the other? It is an interesting area and a relevant one.

I share the Chairman's interest in what all this means for consumers post Brexit in terms of price.