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

As it happens I spoke to someone yesterday about our grid in Dublin. I will be somewhat local about this, if I can. He made the point that our transmission grid in Dublin dates back to the 1950s and 1960s. It was all out of Poolbeg. It radiated out of the old Poolbeg, not even the big chimneys but the old Poolbeg powerplant, and it would radial out. The people who built it then had a real vision and invested ahead. They built a really good transmission system for the 1950s and 1960s that served us in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

We now need to build a new transmission grid in Dublin. Rather than being radial from Poolbeg it needs to be somewhat circular. The scale of it needs to be fit for the middle and end of this century. That is where we are investing. This grid has to be built in the next short number of years. EirGrid is in consultation with local authorities, businesses and everyone. It is a huge project and one that dovetails very well with the development of offshore wind power because we will bring significant power into Dublin from offshore wind. At the same time we will build the grid. It is not just to cope with the offshore wind. It is to deliver all the EV charging, the solar panels, heat pumps and the electrification of our city. That project is hugely important. It will be disruptive. It involves digging roads. They are not huge cables, not as big as the water mains, but they are big enough. Delivery of that grid will require an incredible effort in the next five years. It is a key project.

With regard to offshore, the Deputy mentioned ports. I visited Rosslare Port last Friday. I will go to Cork next week. I was in Shannon and Foynes two months ago. Big, deep-water ports such as those are going to be critical for deployment of offshore wind but also, similar to Dublin, going back to what I said about when the power comes ashore, particularly in Cork and Shannon estuary, it is what we do with the power when it comes ashore. The prize here is the development of the ports as the major industrial development centres in our country. We have to be incredibly quick. We need the installation of turbines to start in 2026. To do that we need deployment ports. This needs a quayside of about 400 m or 500 m long which can take about 1,500 tonnes per square metre and which has 11 m depth in order to get larger vessels in. That is not small infrastructure. That is significant infrastructure with several hundred million euro in investment. We will deliver this. All of Government is committed to this. It is a similar moment to that when Ardnacrusha power station was built. It is that scale of ambition. Central to it is the port and the grid.