Dr. Paul Deane:

Deputy Haughey asked whether the CRU needs more power. I do not believe so. We need to be more agile. This is not a criticism focused only on the CRU, but rather across all institutions working on energy provision in Ireland, whether they work on planning, processing or permitting. We need to display a level of agility. When I reflect on the last crisis, the Covid-19 crisis, and the remarkable job we all did in responding to that, in particular the Government, I note the level of agility and urgency was unprecedented. We took actions that were commensurate with the urgency of the crisis. We are not seeing that agility at the moment. The energy system is a little different as there is much more inertia in the system and permitting challenges are real.

The CRU does not need more power. Typically, if the CRU demands reductions in the electricity or gas sectors, it yields power through prices. It sends price signals to consumers and, as Mr. O'Donoghue said, we know those price signals work. We must acknowledge the pain in those price signals if we want people to reduce consumption. Whether it is industry, commercial use or residential sectors, some level of burden sharing and pain will be involved. The CRU has mechanisms at its disposal to exert influence through pricing.

Ireland used to be a leader in offshore wind. In the early 2000s, Ireland built one of the first offshore wind farms in the world, the Arklow bank. We were once a leader in this area and unfortunately we are now at the back of the pack. We have not built any offshore wind farms since. There is an expectation in the industry that the next offshore wind farm will not be delivered until after 2025 and many believe it will be 2027 or 2028. That is disappointing when one considers the timeline, the resource we have in Ireland, the crisis, our reliance on fossil fuels and how much we are spending on them every single hour. I mentioned that €1 million is leaving the State and going to companies around the world, while we have a rich resource on our doorstep and on our shores that we are not quick enough to exploit.

The potential for performance in offshore wind energy is real and the magnitude is massive. It is not just about producing energy but also about providing meaningful jobs, reducing our emissions, increasing our resilience and robustness as a society and becoming more responsible for our energy production. The energy production in Ireland for the past few decades has essentially been outsourced to other countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway and the United States. Those are the countries that produce most of the energy we use in Ireland. We need to take economic and environmental responsibility for our energy production and the great assets we have are our wind, both on and offshore, and even solar power. Our agricultural and farming communities also have huge potential to generate energy and as households we all have huge potential to save energy. In short, our offshore wind story is disappointing. We were once a leader but we are now at the back of the pack and that is disappointing when one considers the resources available here.

Ireland is relatively unique in comparison with other EU member states in not having any gas storage capacity. We used to have the Kinsale Head gas field which had the ability to store a limited amount of gas but it was important. Gas storage would be fundamentally important if there was a physical interruption of gas supply from the UK to Ireland. We get a little gas from the Corrib gas field, which meets about 25% of our annual gas needs. Unfortunately, that is dwindling and we will become more reliant on the UK for the transit of gas into this country. Most of the gas comes in via two undersea pipelines. If anything happened to those pipelines, it would be catastrophic, especially over a long period. Gas storage would help to mitigate that risk. The Government has launched a consultation process energy security to consider the gas storage option and options for liquid natural gas, LNG. We need to consider and evaluate those options to understand which of them is best suited to Ireland's needs but also to our long-term decarbonisation goals.

Once we decide which one it is, we need to act with agility. As Mr. O'Donoghue said, this crisis will not go away over the next couple of years. It will endure. We will have a hard winter next winter and Ireland will continue to have that exposure to fossil fuels. The crisis we are seeing at the moment is an energy crisis, but at its core it is a fossil fuel crisis. As Ireland is one of the most fossil fuel-reliant countries in the world, we need to do everything to reduce our reliance to that exposure.