Mr. Peter O'Shea:

Turlough Hill is interesting because we did an analysis a couple of weeks back on what a full day of electricity storage would require, if we had to rely totally on intermittent energy. If the wind did not blow and the sun did not shine we would need 16 new Turlough Hills to provide one day's energy.

Let me revert to the main point. From our perspective, we see the decarbonisation of the electricity system as a two lap race. The first lap is what we are doing at present, which is about of incremental growth in the existing renewable technologies.

We see that getting us to somewhere between 50% and 60% of the system some time in the next decade, perhaps the middle of that decade. The second lap is much more difficult and this is what informs the perspective we take on the clean energy package. There is not a silver bullet technology to deal with that second lap and take the other 50% from the system. The large-scale technologies are the likes of carbon capture and storage, biomass, interconnection or unabated gas, although there are still significant issues with carbon with unabated gas.

The second stage of this journey is much more difficult to a large extent. Our perspective on the directive is how to keep options open for Ireland. The Deputy asked a question about biomass and there is some very positive stuff on biomass in the directive. It focuses on quality biomass and how it is produced rather than used; how it is produced determines how sustainable it is. That is partly related to the sustainability question and partly related to food chain impact. It is a serious development at a European level and that is positive. We see it as a concern that the draft directive would require that a biomass source would be coupled with a heat source in the same location. That is a constraint we do not need right now; we do not need to answer the question right now so why put in that constraint at a European level? Ireland has limited options as to how it can address the second lap of its race and from our perspective, we should keep options open rather than closing them. The challenge here is too big to have options closed.