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

Mr. Mark Foley:

Rightly or wrongly, we have taken a view and are comforted by statements by the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, the Tánaiste, Arlene Foster and Theresa May. Everybody is saying the all-Ireland electricity market is compelling and should not be interfered with in a Brexit context. We remain hopeful that will be the case. As we know, the Brexit story changes every day. As such, we are trying not to react on a day-to-day basis but all our advocacy is directed towards it. We had Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in SONI on 6 August on a fact-finding mission. We had him in the control room in Castlereagh.

We explained how the market works and how integrated it is. The process to disaggregate that is a massive project in its own right. We remain hopeful that sanity will prevail and that this is not going to be messed around with.