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

I will see the Deputy's rivers trust and raise her our rivers trust. We were involved, with friends and colleagues, in Dodder Action where we do incredible work along the Dodder, cleaning it up and sharing knowledge, history, stories and analysis of what is going on in the river. We tried to set up a rivers trust on the Dodder. Dodder Action is a really good and capable organisation, but could we crack the administrative process? A lot of our processes are so difficult for voluntary systems to overcome, and we could not do it. We were as well motivated and organised as anyone, but we just did not get it over the line. We have an issue on that.

On GNI, I will answer the Deputy's question in this way. I said this at a public meeting recently, so I am not saying anything different to what I would say publicly or to the company itself. I am not responsible for GNI. It is under the Department of housing and local government. It is a superb company, with brilliant capability and a fantastic tradition and history of engineering and community engagement. It is brilliant. However, I believe it needs to take the same path I have seen taken by Bord na Móna, which has gone from brown to green. It had a near death experience between four and five years ago when the European legal requirement landed and it ended peat production. Look at what has happened to Bord na Móna since. It has turned the company round incredibly. It is probably one of the fastest growing and most successful companies in the country at the moment in a variety of different areas, renewables in particular. The mindset of the management, board and workers is that this is the future, and they are going to go green. They are going green at speed and at scale, and it is a fantastic success story, to my mind. GNI needs to do something similar. The future will not be providing fossil gas to an ever expanding network of customers or users. To my mind, I would have thought it has to switch to being part of the biomethane future that offers us more sustainable gas. Why is GNI not chomping at the bit to be at the centre of the new district heating? It is brilliant at laying pipes, and at heat and energy. You would surely think it has huge capability. We know we will expand district heating at scale in a variety of different areas. I think there will be an important role for GNI in the future of energy and energy security in this country but it will not be in deploying fossil gas. Look at where fossil gas goes. Some 50% goes to power generation. When we get to 80% renewables, as we know with absolutely certainty we will, there will be a significant reduction in the amount of gas we will have to transmit. Peak load may be high in the middle of a cold winter morning but the future there entails a massive reduction. In a similar way, 35% of gas is to industrial customers, the vast majority of which will switch to heat pumps, which brings us back to what we said earlier. There is no big future expansion in gas use there. Anyway, the businesses cannot and will not. I do not see the customers going in that direction. Will data centres really say they are going a high carbon route? Of the remaining 15%, there are 800,000 Irish households who rely on gas.

There will not be a cut-off. There is a transition. I come back to what I said about making sure Irish householders are protected from high prices and so on. It is not as if that is going to stop overnight. There too the switch is going to come. In the development of biomethane we could develop something like 15% of our current gas demand if we meet our targets in biomethane. When we look at the reductions in all of the other areas biomethane will be providing a very large percentage and it probably will be specialised. The use of biogas probably will be in those very high intense heat areas in industry that use combined heat and power. A data centre that has backup power generation that needs to be able to turn on at the flick of a switch could use biomethane gas in that. It could be part of the 100% zero carbon solutions. There will be a role for the gas company but it is much more specialised and much more within a decarbonise strategy. If we do not go in that direction then we are going against the way the world is going. Business is making this switch and a business that is not part of the switch will have a very uncertain future.