Ms Marie Donnelly:

I agree with the Deputy that Ireland has placed itself to the fore in terms of the quality of its food and the export value of food, which is certainly true, and in the area of ICT. We are seen as a major hub for data centres in Europe. It is perhaps an issue that, like electricity, is another language and is another form of metrics that we do not use on a daily basis. Data centres are, in a way, the lifeblood of our new digitalised world. We tend to think of data centres as Microsoft, Facebook and all of these very large companies, but our local health authority operates a data centre and our local wholesale distributor of food operates a data centre. Data centres are part and parcel of everything we do because we have moved into the digitalised space. The challenge we have is how we ensure they become part of the system rather than working outside it. As I was expressing to Deputy Cronin, data centres take in very large quantities of power and they reserve very large quantities of power because they cannot afford to go down. The challenge we have is how we ensure a data centre, which has a surplus at any one point in time of up 25% of its power, can use that surplus to benefit the grid and benefit the system, rather than locking it up and never using it.

The second part in regard to data centres is how we take the surplus heat and use that to the benefit of society in heating our homes and our offices. It is the joined-up approach. There, we need to look at what they have done in other countries, and I have already mentioned Denmark, which is one illustration of where they are specifically doing that.

In the area of food, the key issue that we need to keep on top of is what is the market demand. For food, in particular the food we export, we respond to consumer demands. At a point in time when consumer demand wants low fat or high energy, or whatever it might be, as producers of food, that is the market giving us signals and we need to respond to those signals. In our very successful food industry, our challenge, which was addressed in the food paper which came out from Bord Bia not long ago, is to increase the value of our food, to move our food exports up the value chain and not remain at the bottom of the low value side of the chain. We need to be able to go up the chain in terms of high-value proteins, specialist foods and nutraceuticals, for example, in order to be able to protect that industry but also to respond to consumer demand. That is the challenge but I believe it is also the opportunity for these very successful sectors.

Looking at some of the core measures that have been identified, and some of them were already in Deputy Bruton’s own climate action plan in 2019, depending on who one talks to, people will prioritise one or other of the criteria first. From the council's perspective, our first criterion for investment is emissions reduction. We are looking for emissions reduction coming from the investments that we make. We accept that, sometimes, that reduction might not come immediately and it might be a delayed reaction but, ultimately, what we are looking for is emissions reduction. The second criteria we would apply is energy efficiency, that is, managing demand, be it in transport, in heating, in construction or whatever the area might be. These would be the overarching criteria or metrics that we would use in terms of identifying preferential expenditure going forward.

That is why, if we look at some of the activities that are taking place now, they are not cheap. Offshore wind is not cheap but it will deliver very substantial emissions reduction and allow us to manage the flow of electricity, which will be our electricity from our natural resource into the future. We can ask what is the easiest, and we should do what is easiest anyway. We should ask what is least cost, and we should probably do it in any event. We should ask what is tried and tested, and we should benefit from that. We earlier discussed anaerobic digestion, which is already established in many parts of Europe, and we can benefit from that experience and do it in Ireland. District heating is the norm in Scandinavia and in all of the eastern European countries. Again, it is not a new technology and we can benefit from that and take on board something that is tried and tested elsewhere to our own benefit here in Ireland.

In terms of the actions that are taking place and coming through, rewetting bogs is a big issue and a big activity, and I know Bord na Móna is already well advanced in its efforts in that respect. That will deliver results for us. We tend to think of the very large bogs when we talk about rewetting bogs but, of course, we need to analyse and look at our land map because there are many parts of the country where we have peatlands that have been desiccated and that need to be rewetted. That is going to be an ongoing role for agricultural policy with Teagasc in order to be able to support farmers in the management of the land to get the right balance for their piece of land.

In construction, I believe the opportunities for green building in construction are huge. We really can do so much more. It is an area where I believe that the industry itself, which is now developing the plans to do it, can deliver for us. It is a question that we can fairly ask. Although I am not talking about high rises, when we look at construction today and look at construction 100 years ago, it has not actually changed that much. There are very few industries that operate today in the same way they operated 100 years ago. Therefore, the opportunity for innovation and for new ways of doing things is very substantial in the construction space. Ireland can be a leader in that space because we have a real demand for construction going forward.

There are opportunities from biomethane - we have both biogas and biomethane - and longer term, if there is an industry in that space, using that in conjunction with the potential of hydrogen, for example, coming from floating offshore wind will give us an opportunity to move from electrons, that is, our renewable electricity side, to molecules, which can be used on the island, can become a significant export product and can be used in the generation of new industries. The potential is very useful and we need to look positively at it into the future.