Dr. Liam Ryan:

I will work my way through Senator Higgins's questions. I reassure the Senator that the final roadmap for shaping our electricity future will be a blend of the four options. The options were laid out to allow the debate and discussion to happen so that we are looking at the potential extremities that will get us to the 70% renewables target by 2030. We are out and engaging, taking the feedback necessary and listening to ensure the final roadmap we are looking at producing in the autumn will be considered in relation to a blend of the four approaches, which would give us the most economic solution in the timeframe we are looking at.

Storage is part of the solutions we are bringing in, in particular in the operation of the power system. We have been bringing on storage and looking to connect storage on to the system to give us flexibility in how we operate the system with 70% of our electricity coming from renewable sources. We are trialling 75% of our instantaneous electricity coming from renewable sources. That kicked off over the past week or so.

Data centres are part of the ecosystem we have. In one of the options, Senator Higgins called out that we are looking to move large energy users outside of the Dublin region to help in connecting renewable sources and meeting the targets we have. We see that, into the future, large energy users can be a solution as well as a challenge to us. It is looking at how they bring solutions to the table that help meet the targets we need to meet. Government policy needs to look at how that can evolve over the next period in time.