Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Professor McMullin has answered a lot of our questions. I am particularly glad that he engaged on that point around the generation capacity problem that we have. There has been a lot of muddying of the waters in the media and so on about the need for LNG to prevent blackouts. Professor McMullin has made it very clear today that it is about the generation of electricity that leads to those short-term blackouts.

To pick up on the point on the N-1 infrastructure standard, we had got the regulator here and they kept flagging that it was going to be a big concern. At the time I made the point that nothing has physically changed other than Brexit; the infrastructure and risk have not changed. Putting aside the risk to the interconnectors from a geopolitical point of view, of bad faith actors damaging that infrastructure, does Professor McMullin think there is any risk diplomatically between the two? When we have met with officials from the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and with Gas Networks Ireland, they have said their counterparts meet on a daily basis, civil servants meet very regularly and there is a long-standing political agreement. If Britain was to turn off that pipe, it would turning it off to the North of Ireland and the Isle of Man as well. Professor McMullin says this could be addressed politically. Does he think that is a big challenge or something that might just need to be reaffirmed to give people assurances?