Mr. Kevin Brady:

The Celtic interconnector is a joint project between EirGrid and the French transmission system operator, Réseau de Transport d'Électricité, RTE. In July of last year, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the two companies, witnessed by our Minister, the Taoiseach and the President of France in Dublin to move to the next stage of development, which is the two-year development and feasibility study. The plan is that at the end of the two years, the project would be ready to move to the actual development phase in terms of carrying out the planning permissions and the environmental studies and getting any of the permits and requirements needed. Regarding a timescale, the project would be developed around the middle of the 2020s. The project is very much on course. It is a project of common interest, PCI, under European legislation. It receives Connecting Europe Facility, CEF, funding, and I understand it may well be in the process of drawing down more funding for the feasibility studies it is carrying out. There are a few key points to make about the Celtic interconnector in the context of Brexit. First, post-Brexit, Ireland will only be connected to the European energy market via the UK; we will have no direct connections. Therefore, the Celtic interconnector could be a direct electricity interconnector to the European market, which would give us access to potentially cheaper electricity and the potential ability to export renewable energies to the greater European market. Second, the Celtic interconnector is not the solution to many of the issues we talked about earlier. It is of the order of 500 MW to 700 MW. That will undoubtedly help our security of electricity supply but it would not in any way replace the question of gas we talked about and the reliance on gas. Reliance on gas from the UK may drop because we may be importing more electricity from France or be able to generate more renewable energy on our own system, but the reliance on gas generally would not decrease. Therefore, I would not like to give the impression that the Celtic interconnector could solve all our problems, but it is definitely a very positive project and is in a very positive space, and work is ongoing on its development.