Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for their presentations. My first question is for the Minister. Does he think he has been kept adequately informed by the CRU and EirGrid over the past 12 months regarding security of supply? Maybe he will share with us some of the requests he has received from both parties. Does he believe the Department has acted in a timely way in responding to that?

I will broaden the discussion a little and concentrate on the issue of security. The common thread through all the presentations has been about the non-delivery of previously contracted capacity. All the representatives talked about that. I would like to drill down into that a little more and comment on an auction process that was carried out in 2018 or 2019, when, I understand - or at least it has been suggested to me - that the draft tender documents suggested pre-qualification requirements for those that had planning and grid access. It has been suggested to me that those pre-qualifications were removed from the final tender documents and there was not pre-qualification for those requirements. It has been further suggested that this allowed other actors into the bid process, who bid low or lowballed the bid and, as such, removed some of the other bidders from the process. As a result of that, some of these actors failed to deliver. Can anybody tell me if there is validity to that? It has also been suggested that the ESB was one of the bidders that did not have either grid access or planning permission for up to 400 MW and, as a result, did not deliver. It paid the fee that was required if it failed to deliver and that may have suited them, as they had other legacy plants that could provide the electricity. It was a commercial decision to bid and not deliver. That is a charge that has been put to me, as a public representative. It is my duty to bring it to the representatives' attention and ask them to comment on it at this public forum.

My final question is directed to Mr. Foley. EirGrid considered seeking 300 MW of emergency generation for the winter of last year. Why did it not go ahead with that? If it had done so, would that have removed the concerns we now have whereby Mr. Doyle indicated there is a potential risk of a gap of approximately 270 MW? If EirGrid had proceeded with the 300 MW it considered last year, would we find ourselves in a better situation than we do now?