Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. I return to the matter of CCS. Many members sat on the Joint Committee on Climate Action. CCS was discussed in detail and we heard a slightly different version of how CCS fitted into the pyramid. While I was pushing a point, the guests appearing before that committee raised the issue of how we needed to change how we generate electricity, and many other issues, before we examined CCS.

What Gas Networks Ireland indicated is slightly different. It stated it will be part of the mix in the future, which is different from what we heard three or four months ago from the academics in the field. Will ours guests outline the timeline? The Kinsale gas field could be depleted in the next 18 months to two years. The infrastructure is in place. Will there come a time when GNI will have to take a commercial decision on whether the infrastructure will have to be changed or removed? Will a decision on whether the Kinsale gas field will be a viable CCS base have to be taken in the next two or three years, or do our guests envisage a timeline whereby it can leave the infrastructure in place, given that is what makes the field so valuable, and realise that scenario in a decade? Will our guests outline the timeline for the decision to be made on the Kinsale gas field?