Professor Barry McMullin:

The capacity issue is a real concern. We are doing something that has not been attempted before here or anywhere else and it is clear that our systems are straining. Getting the public administrative systems in operation is a potential obstacle that needs to be addressed and resolved. I am not commenting directly on the proposed legislation in that but it is clear that there has been dysfunction particularly in the planning system. We need a functioning planning system. We need development that is properly assessed. We need development where stakeholders are involved and there is an opportunity and engagement. We need all of those things but we need it to function at speed nonetheless and those things are difficult to square; I will not make any bones about that. We are straining to develop fast enough. The Deputy referred to the renewables capacity development. We have to do everything we can to facilitate that happening, particularly the offshore projects that have now received offers. We want to see those progress successfully and as quickly as possible. However, the other infrastructure point I emphasise is grid. This decarbonisation story is largely a story of electrification. It is taking things that have not traditionally been done directly with electricity and doing them with electricity.

While it is important to manage our total energy use as frugally as possible, and ideally reduce it, our electricity use is definitely going to increase. There is no way of going through this transition without dramatically increasing our electricity use. All the pathways involve that and probably the doubling of our electricity use. That means visible electricity infrastructure otherwise known as transmission lines, pylons, and grid. We need to be doubling that at least. It will not all be overhead but a lot of it will need to be. First, I do not think there is general awareness across Irish society that this has to happen and it has to happen really fast if we are to deliver on the things on which we say we want to deliver. Second, there is not the acceptance. Awareness comes before acceptance but we need to get to the awareness point at least. We need to progress through that and help wider society understand why this is the path we have to follow and why this is the technical requirement for a largely electrified society. It will not be 100% electrified but it will be a largely electrified society. It will involve visible grid infrastructure and that will get in people's eye line. I happen to think some pylons are not that ugly but I am an exception. I appreciate people's concerns about disruption and there is a lot of bad faith misinformation spread about health risks from transmission lines. There is all sorts of stuff that goes on around that. As we get deeper into this, there is a real risk if we have not done the communication part much more strongly to prepare people for the fact that this is going to happen in every part of the country. It will not just be one transmission line in one local place. This needs to happen and it needs to happen at speed and scale all over the country in the coming years.

Yes, there is going to be wind turbines. There will be bigger turbines on land and turbines offshore that will be visible. Anybody who - as I have frequently - has taken the land route to Europe through Holyhead and the train across north Wales, will see massive offshore wind development and what it looks like. I will not argue the aesthetics but to me at least, there is no competition there between a compromise of visual aesthetics against all the other kinds of risk we have discussed in this session. Of course, there are concerns about marine ecology and about interacting with fisheries and all of those things need to be addressed. However, they need to be addressed at speed and at scale.

We are not going to get everything right. It is not going to be pretty. We will make some mistakes but we do not have a time machine and the only way of doing this perfectly is with one of those. We do not have a time machine so can only work in the scenario we now have now. As an engineering colleague at a recent event bemoaned, or his caricature of this situation was, that our biggest problem is too much paper. We have all the plans in the world but translating those plans into physical engineering infrastructure on the ground is the big struggle. It is unprecedented and is going to be difficult. We are not going to get everything right.

In Ireland, we are making the attempt. Society at large supports the principle and we saw this in the citizens' assembly. It is persuaded of the principle and Ireland is blessed as that is not true of all country's of the world. Irish society at large supports the principle but it is still quite unsure and vague about what the practical implications are. Therefore, more advanced notice and advanced warning would assist in helping people understand that this is going to be intrusive in places.

Community engagement is very important and we need to do more of it and a lot of it. However, community engagement does not mean community veto. These are things for the greater good. We need to have means to assess the greater good in all these things, make balanced assessments of that and then press ahead with actual projects and make them happen.

On the storage question, I am equivocal. I will be honest. This is a subjective risk assessment. Where I land is to say that we just do not have the time any more to go ahead on too many multiple parallel fronts. Notwithstanding the fact that there are risks, we have to put our eggs into some baskets. For me, the security of supply risk for gas, particularly in respect of potential disruption of the interconnectors to Great Britain against the backdrop of declining Corrib gas supplies, merits some mitigation measures within the next five years. This is placing your bets territory and a subjective assessment of the risks. I would be wanting to place the bets on gaseous storage but trying to proceed particularly with the Kinsale head possibility. Secondarily, if we can engage diplomatically, there can be a shared cost basis, shared benefit approaches and a potential European contribution to a cross-Border gas storage facility in Northern Ireland. That is where I land. I respect that other people given exactly the same data may make a different value judgment and land in a different place.