Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation and echo the comments of others in thanking them for the really important work they do behind the scenes. I also want to add my voice to the recognition of the role of Eddie O'Connor in driving the vision around energy generation and clean and green energy generation in this country. He is a very significant loss to all of us. He was available to many of us to give good advice on occasion.

I want to concentrate on the issue with the CRU. Mr. Foley talked about the market mechanism and its failure, quite frankly. That is a bit annoying for us at this committee, because we have had these conversations before. We had the witnesses and others from the CRU in here in a discussion last year. It seems that from EirGrid's perspective, the market system that CRU operates is not functioning. We had the crazy situation last year where, on EirGrid's advice, the State and the taxpayer had to fund the purchase of very expensive emergency capacity. We should have learned from that, surely. I need Mr. Foley to be as direct as he can, being conscious that we are in committee, as to how he thinks that market should be shaped, changed and how it should be constituted in a manner that will encourage those that generate electricity to put capacity in place so that we are not left in such a situation.

As Mr. Foley identified and as we all accept, there will be greater demand for gas back-up as we transition towards wind, and that is going to be a feature of the future. The more wind that is used, the more back-up gas facility we will have to have.

If time permits, will Mr. Foley talk a little more about floating offshore? I have seen an evolution in the past two to three years, even just in the constituency I know best, where there are now a lot of objections to onshore wind capture. It went away for a while but people are changing because a lot of the easier sites have been developed. We can continue with that apace and continue to upset communities, or we can concentrate and recognise that the real future is offshore and is really floating offshore. If we are looking at the powering of the rest of Europe or parts of the rest of Europe, the real potential is in the Atlantic.