Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I might make a few comments myself. It has been quite a long first round, but we have time for a second one. I want to offer some balance to Deputy Cowen's remarks from a few minutes ago, and this narrative that is emerging - which is quite an unhelpful one - that we can develop this vast infrastructure overnight, or at least very quickly.

That is unhelpful, because it belies the reality of the situation, in that it is incredibly complex. It will take considerable planning, resources and so on. This committee sent a delegation to Scotland last September. We travelled to the Moray East windfarm, a fixed-bed wind farm off the coast of Scotland. Scots are the world leaders in this technology. They told us it takes them ten to 11 years to build this kind of infrastructure. Yes, we need the stretch target. We need to do everything we possibly can to achieve it and leave no stone unturned, but understand it is not something we can deliver very quickly. This committee understands that.

The achievement to date in this country, as Mr. Gannon said, is that we are already world leaders in onshore wind development, with up to 40% renewables and most of that is wind. I do not think it is said enough and I am not just saying it because the commissioners are here, but the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, the likes of EirGrid and ESB and the various players within the wind market have done incredible work to get us to where we are today, that is, world leaders able to show other countries how to do this. The CRU deserves credit. That is not to say we do not all make missteps along the way, but it has to be acknowledged that the trend is absolutely in the right direction.

With regard to this subject and our grand ambition, I will mention a piece published by Eddie O'Connor in the The Irish Times last week. I do not know if the witnesses saw it. He argued that one of the blockages to decarbonisation was the contracts for difference and auction system we have, which forces the renewable energy bid prices down. He is saying that the manufacturing sector in particular is under considerable pressure at present and this will become a challenge to decarbonisation. He argued - this is arguably more a question for the European Commission than the CRU, but I would be interested to hear the commissioners' take on it - that we would go back to the system of a fixed price, such as the refit schemes of the past, for renewable energy projects, in order to keep that profitability in the wind energy manufacturing sector, and that would feed into the deliverability of projects. The argument is that this is a European indigenous resource we have off our coast. I think he said we are spending €300 billion on fossil fuels. Most of that money is going out of Europe. We have the resources within Europe and much of them are within the Irish jurisdiction. However, without that price certainty, the sector is struggling and that will impede our decarbonisation ambition. I would be interested to get the commissioners' views on Mr. O'Connor's comments, but I accept the question is probably more pertinent to the European Commission.