Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation and the update. Much of the media coverage in the last number of weeks has flagged concern about the prospect of blackouts and the number of system alerts, with six in the last 12 months compared to 11 in the past ten years. It is reported, and I am not sure if it was scheduled, that Huntstown in Dublin and Whitegate in Cork are down. I am not sure if the witnesses know when they might be back online or the reason they are down. The move away from fossil fuels to renewables is the direction in which we need to go, but in the past 12 months there has been an increasing dependence on Moneypoint. We also read in the newspapers last week about a plan for emergency power generation in Dublin. On the one hand, we have this pressure on the grid in terms of demand and the supply and, on the other hand, there is the massive increase in demand from data centres. It is not only data centres. A major plant in County Kildare will have an electricity demand that is equivalent to that of the city of Galway.

From my perspective, there appears to be a major challenge there, but there is almost an incoherence in terms of policy. The risk to the system appears to be very real. Do the witnesses share that perspective? Are people in the CRU losing sleep at night over these issues? It strikes me, and we do not have sight of the numbers, that this is a real and potentially existential crisis in the system. Do the witnesses have concerns? Do they have a view on particular policies that are in place at present? I live in County Meath, which has many data centres. There are some people in the county who would like to see many more for various reasons. However, real challenges come with that. How did we end up in this position where there are system alerts? Have we a coherent plan to get out of it? There are major concerns about that.