Mr. Denis O'Sullivan:

We have costed the overall plan and I will break it down into its component parts. We have not sought any form of support for the roll-out of CNG or related infrastructure, which we will do on a commercial basis. We advocate for supports to be put in place for the uptake of CNG vehicles. Similar to what has been done in the case of electric vehicles, when haulage and bus companies wish to transfer from diesel to CNG, and to renewable gas via CNG, a support mechanism will be required, although we will do our costing on a purely commercial basis.

On renewable gas, like any other renewable technology, a support is required for the industry. To develop it, we advocate along the lines of what the Government announced in the recent budget, namely, that carbon tax placed on natural gas should be used to decarbonise gas. Doing so will cover the cost of developing the industry. We have set out a trajectory for year-by-year volumes, costs and so on in that regard. The support is not a support for GNI. We will not produce the gas and, in fact, we are prohibited from doing so under legislation, as part of the third energy directive. The support will go directly to rural communities where anaerobic digestion plants are constructed and where the feedstock comes from. We will facilitate it coming onto the network, as we do in the case of natural gas.

Mr. Murphy might comment on the carbon capture and storage, CCS, costs.

On LNG, any additional source will provide additional security of supply. Nevertheless, I remind the committee of our proposal in Vision 2050. Our dependence on natural gas will decrease as we increase the level of renewable gas and hydrogen on the network. While we would like to bring hydrogen forward, sufficient work simply has not been done to develop the technologies needed for hydrogen. We are rolling out a project to verify and test our network and to ensure that will meet all the regulatory requirements as we increase the level of hydrogen on the network. We are also considering-----