Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 13 November 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
Third Report of the Citizens' Assembly: Discussion (Resumed)
3:00 pm
Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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While I agree with Mr. Foley that we need to ship power to Dublin in particular, the North Sea's offshore grid initiative has been running for ten years. We did the isles project ten years ago to look at this very issue. It is not as if we have not been thinking about this. If we build that greenlink interconnector and find out five or ten years later that it has not been designed to integrate with the rest of what we are doing in the Irish Sea, we will be kicking ourselves. It makes sense to think strategically about this. We have to proceed quickly because doing it for 2030 will not be easy. I argue that the isles project work, the North Sea's offshore grid initiative, the ENTSO-E's ten year plans show that there has been thinking around this. I would prefer to proceed in a co-ordinated way, even if it takes a year or two longer, to give us time to put that co-ordination in place.