Mr. Bobby Smith:

I will respond briefly to Deputy Cronin's question. I apologise for all the market-speak in the past few hours but I definitely think there is a lack of joined-up thinking in all of this. We need a whole-of-system approach. That is why, in our statement, we urge the creation of a industry liaison group with the different policymakers, ideally led by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, and with EirGrid, the CRU and the industry on board, to tackle all these issues and ensure there is a whole-of-system thinking that delivers the broad portfolio of technologies we will need.

On Deputy O'Sullivan's point and on EirGrid's point, we need to be ambitious about how we will tackle this. There is a medium - green hydrogen and other forms of renewable gas - that will be needed for those extended periods of low renewable output, which can often be across Ireland, Great Britain and the Continent. Interconnection will only help us so much. What we need, ideally, is for the new generation being built to be hydrogen-fuelled ready at a point in time to convert to that medium of primary fuel and for existing generation to be retrofitted. We believe that is possible but that needs to be built to ensure we do not lock ourselves into a certain aspect of fossil fuel generation for decades to come.