Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We are pretty much out of time. It has been a brilliant discussion, with great contributions from all the members. The answers from our guests have been very interesting and will give us plenty to think about. I do think there is a big question about that 70% figure. It seems to me that that is very much related to a peak demand scenario rather than the average demand scenario, and I think that if you look at the EirGrid projections, based on the average demand scenario, you are looking at 28% of power by 2030 that would be used by data centres. We will have representatives of EirGrid before us next week and we will put that question to them. It is critically important that we are accurate in the numbers we speak about.

I heard an interesting discussion earlier today. We are hearing caution - I will not say pessimism - on the one hand, and I am hearing ambition and optimism, on the other. It is appropriate that those be the bounds of our conversation. I view the world perhaps through an optimistic lens. We have vast opportunity in Ireland to build out green energy infrastructure quickly. Our challenge is to do that as quickly as possible. In the past few years, we have started to see that a quicker decarbonisation of our energy systems - of our whole economy, actually - is quite possible, and what we see now as possible we did not see as such until quite recently.

I wish to pick up on a point Dr. Bresnihan made about Wind Energy Ireland. Wind Energy Ireland had its conference during the week and is certainly doing what it is meant to be doing, which is pushing the Government as much as it can to develop its sector. Wind Energy Ireland produced an excellent report called Endgame in the past few months, which shows that it is with the 30% demand from data centres scenario, which is the high scenario, that we could get well beyond 70% and even beyond 80% renewable electricity by 2030. We should be ambitious and optimistic and work with the likes of Wind Energy Ireland to get to where we need to get to. I am very heartened to hear Dr. Carton's comments and his vision for green hydrogen in Ireland and that Ireland would be a global energy hub. I think we will be exporting clean energy around the world in the decades to come, and that is a very positive vision that we should all hold on to.

I have questions for Dr. Tienhaara. We do not have time, unfortunately, to go into them. Her contributions today were excellent and we value them very much. I will not put any questions simply because we are well over time at this point, but I thank all the witnesses who have appeared before us today. It really was an excellent discussion. I thank members as well. I think we have advanced the level of debate on this subject. With respect to questions about moratoriums, we have heard today that this is a very nuanced situation and that there are real technical challenges in what we are trying to do. We are world leaders in this area and, to my mind, that question of a moratorium needs to be looked at very closely. In a nuanced technological situation, it seems to me that a moratorium might be a sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach. This is very much an operations issue with the likes of EirGrid, which is a world leader, and I think we should listen to them and trust them in their abilities.