Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. I might touch on a couple of the points he made.

As regards planning and opposition we have seen, I referred earlier to the fact that we have seen a really strong past 12 months in terms of planning for wind energy generation. We have had nearly 1 GW of projects through planning in the past 12 months because of investment in resources in An Coimisiún Pleanála. As regards opposition to major infrastructure, if you look back at the past ten to 15 years, a number of large-scale projects were proposed for grid infrastructure which did not have the political support they should have had. Had those projects proceeded, our country could be in a much stronger position when it comes to our electricity grid and our capability to manage renewables generation and increasing demand growth. That is just a comment to the effect that we need to back and politically support grid infrastructure. It has to be done at national and, critically, local level.

In response to the Deputy's question about the private wires Bill, the private wires policy was published just yesterday evening. On first read, it seems to be a very progressive move. It is something our industry has certainly been very supportive of. The next step and a key thing we believe is critical is getting through the primary legislation element of it as quickly as possible. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, referred yesterday to getting that done by the second half of next year. We want to see the resources put in to make sure that the primary legislation can be changed. The second thing is that it puts a lot of responsibility on the CRU to administrate many of the processes in the private wires Bill. We know that it is resource-constrained for the existing job it is working on when it comes to renewable energy and electricity storage, so getting it resourced up to be able to deliver on that and on the private wires Bill will be vital.

The Deputy also asked about any good international examples. I recognise that this relates to system operation. There are a number of really good international examples of accelerating renewable energy at the moment. Germany has done a fantastic job of implementing new EU legislation for planning for renewable projects. It has seen increases in the hundreds of percentage points on the amount of renewable generation it is connecting. Then we can look to neighbours like the UK for the job they have done in connecting offshore wind energy projects. This is something the entire committee wants in the context of the ability to deliver offshore wind energy as fast as possible. It is something we are all working on. We are happy to facilitate a visit to an offshore wind farm for the committee during the present term over the coming years. I ask the committee reach out to us on that.