Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the guests and to those who are returning. My question is for the CRU and its opening statement on energy security, which I have raised previously with the Department and in the Dáil. The CRU said that delivering the regulatory framework to support the new interconnectors Greenlink and the Celtic link. What does it foresee as the stumbling blocks, if any, in that process? Could the witnesses outline them from the CRU perspective?

On LNG, reference was made to the review of energy security by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. Will the CRU elaborate a little more on that from this standpoint?

On data centres, the CRU has said there was a consultation on a draft direction on the new data centre connection policy. I may be wrong, but I thought this was published in July. How many people engaged, took part or were consulted in that consultation?

I found the comments by the EirGrid witnesses to be positive and welcoming considering the debate in the public domain on energy security and supply over the next couple of months in particular. EirGrid highlighted that Ireland had achieved 43% of all electricity in 2020 from renewable sources, which was ahead of the target. I commend EirGrid and others on securing that, which is very welcome. Mr Foley said the market must evolve if we are to achieve our collective decarbonisation goals and he highlighted the right technologies, on time and at a fair price. We are all trying to achieve that and we want to see it come on stream. He outlined the outlook for the winter, which I touched on, and he was quite positive about that, which is reassuring, particularly people watching in. He referred to EirGrid's generation capacity statement and the need for a robust plan under direction from the regulator and the Department to deal with the issues in the short to medium term, notwithstanding the unpalatable nature of some of those contingency measures. In the time we have left, he might outline those contingency measures.