Mr. Terence O'Rourke:

I am aware of the status with regard to the Paris Agreement and the climate legislation, both enacted and pending. The ESB will be committed to playing its part in the decarbonisation of the Irish economy. We also have the commitment to make sure that we continue to have electricity available. As we decarbonise transport and heating domestically and industrially, electricity is probably the best way to do that. If electricity can be generated as safely, as securely and with as low-carbon emissions as possible, it would be the best. It is not, however, something that can be done overnight. We believe there will be a requirement for a suitable mix of generation that is increasingly sustainable. Our target is 70% by 2030, which is in line with the legislation and the Paris Agreement, as I understand it. If we can do it quicker than that, we will.

As I said to Deputy Bruton, one of the issues is the intermittence on renewables such as wind and solar. The sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, so one must have other technologies available. At the moment the best one of those, and the least carbon effective one, is gas.

We use Moneypoint and coal burning very infrequently now. The heavy fuel such as diesel oil is also hardly used. We got out of those. We have moved away from the high carbon fuels used to generate thermal plants. We now use gas as the last piece of the thermal plant. That will be required for a number of years going forward because of the need to continue to supply electricity for Irish social and economic activity and as we go on the journey towards full-scale renewables.

We will need to deal with some technical issues. It takes a long time to develop offshore wind, for example off the west coast of Ireland, which is a major part of that. There will be more solar, there will be microgeneration, and a number of components in the transition in line with the Paris Agreement and the climate change legislation. Gas will be an important part of making sure we have security of supply as we go on that journey over the next decade or so.