John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see the Commissioner and I thank her for coming. Will the Commission support Ireland to develop further interconnection infrastructure? Would that support come from the EU through funding? The trans-European networks for energy, TEN-E, which has €5 billion, would be a useful source of funding but that is something the Irish Government would have to request. Would the Commissioner support the Irish Government if it made a request for funding? I raise the issue because as the Commissioner will know, the Celtic interconnector received planning approval. However, it will transfer only a very small amount of electricity. We have so much potential with offshore wind that we can be of real benefit to Europe but we need that funding to provide the infrastructure in the first place. Will the Commission support the Government on that issue?

My next question does not fall exactly within the Commissioner's remit but is connected to it. It falls more under the remit of Commissioner Mairéad McGuinness and relates to the EU's sustainable finance taxonomy policy. That policy was designed to implement a gold standard of green investing where investments were labelled as climate friendly. What is the thought process behind the EU labelling nuclear energy climate friendly and a green type of energy? It is not, to be frank. It is so slow that it will not help us to reach our 2030 or 2050 targets. It is not sustainable. What is the thought process behind considering nuclear energy green and including it in the taxonomy rules in the first instance?