Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Senator is right. Her concerns have been heightened this year because of an Italian decision, of which she is fully aware, regarding compensation being provided to a UK operator that bought an interest in that. I do not believe the same circumstances apply in the Irish context. The difficulty in the Energy Charter Treaty, as the Senator knows, is that there is a 20-year period within which, even if one opted out, one is still locked into the system. The best way of working and dealing with this is working with our colleagues across Europe so that we reform and make sure, and this is what was centre stage in the negotiations that went through this summer, that nothing in an Energy Charter Treaty can impede or hinder decarbonisation efforts, because that is not acceptable. The best way and the strongest way of addressing that is through a European approach, which we do work on.