Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our witnesses for attending today. This discussion is incredibly timely. The need to accelerate the development of renewables has been brought into sharp focus by the IPCC report and obviously more recently by the geopolitical situation and the cost of energy. Co-operation between Germany and Ireland comes into sharp focus as well, with Germany's reliance on gas from Russia which has been reported on a lot recently. Obviously, there are huge opportunities there and more generally in terms of Ireland's enormous potential, which we have talked about for a long time. All of this should probably be happening faster and the whole process should have commenced a lot earlier but having said that, the rate of acceleration of things like the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill and the Maritime Area Planning Bill shows that a lot has been achieved in the last 12 months. I do not think there is any doubt about the Government's commitment to the project but unfortunately it cannot be done with the click of a finger. We certainly need to try to accelerate, where possible, in a sensitive way. I do not think we should get too distracted by what Scotland is doing or how far ahead it is. We have enormous potential here, particularly off the west and south west coast. We need to get that right and not be distracted by what Scotland is doing. Let the Scots do what they will, although I am sure we can learn from them, which is also important.

My first question is for Ms Dempsey, Mr. Daly and Dr. Carton and follows on from Deputy Bruton's question relating to the practicalities of exporting hydrogen to Germany. Deputy Bruton asked if this would require an interconnector. What are the mechanics of this and how will it work in terms of generating energy, turning it into hydrogen and exporting it to the German market? How far advanced do we need to be in order to make that happen and how far off are we right now? Deputy Bruton probably put the question better than me.

My next question is for Dr. Carton and relates to what we need to be doing. It should be acknowledged that Deputy O'Rourke introduced a Green Hydrogen Strategy Bill which really brought this issue into focus. We need to develop a hydrogen strategy and I am sure we will do so. Dr. Carton mentioned a few things that we need to be doing in order to develop hydrogen. I ask him to give us some international examples of strategies that are more advanced and to outline what we can learn from them.

Mr. Cunniffe mentioned that we need to develop a situation where Irish renewables are not as expensive as they are now. I ask him to explain why they are so expensive and to outline what we need to do to reduce or minimise the cost of Irish renewables. He also mentioned that we need to strengthen and increase the resources within the NPWS, for very good reason. As much as everybody here would love to see an acceleration of the development of fixed offshore and floating offshore energy generation, it cannot be done without taking into account the impact on marine wildlife and habitats. I have looked into this and understand that there has been some work done on some of the Scottish wind farms in terms of the impact on wildlife, including ecological surveys. NGOs and the public in general probably need to hear that this work is being done, that we are not going into this completely blind and that we are studying those potential impacts.

Mr. Cunniffe referred to the 1 GW auction that is being proposed by Mr. Dollard. Is that something that Wind Energy Ireland and its members are in favour of? Is an additional 1 GW of floating offshore wind something the organisation would be pushing for? Finally, on the hybrid grid connection, do current guidelines and legislation allow for that? If not, how do they need to be changed to allow for that?