Mr. Tom Donnellan:

I will first address what we call the just transition. We must phase out peat. Bord na Móna fully agrees with that and has faced up to it. We have made a decision, which was part of our announcement, to get ahead of this and stop trying to push back the tide or keep it going for as long as possible. We are committed to getting out of peat. There is no question about that, it is just a matter of how we do that in a practical and managed way. The first part is what we announced some weeks ago whereby we must reshape the company to get our financials in order as the public service obligation subsidies have come off. The first part of the process is consolidation and simplifying.

The second part relates to a just transition. We have been on a transition in recent years. The first was Edenderry power plant, which we started to co-fire with biomass. We will also move the two ESB ones to it. We regard this as best practice in managing a transition. One can look at the situation around the globe. Our neighbours in the UK have substantially adopted biomass to provide dispatchable power. In Scandinavia, ten plants are being constructed to burn biomass and, similar to what we are doing, another five are being converted. We feel this is a good practice that will allow us time to transition away from peat.

There was a question of why we would not do it sooner. Clearly, the sustainable supply of biomass is a challenge. We are very concerned and very conscious that it must be sustainable. Mr. Shier will outline how we will manage that. Its supply is constrained so we could not go 100% biomass at this stage. We will do it over a period. We have successfully developed the indigenous biomass supply chain. When we started co-firing the Edenderry plant, there was virtually no biomass supply chain in Ireland. We have now taken that to approximately 400,000 tons. In the region of 70% of what goes into the Edenderry plant is indigenous. The biomass we burn is saw mill residue and thinnings. We do not burn the trunk of the tree, we burn the top and bottom, the branches and what is left behind. We are working to develop the indigenous supply chain further because it makes much more economic sense and there is a lower carbon footprint. That will take time, however. A lot of work is being undertaken with Coilte, our sister company, whereby we are looking at afforestation. We are in discussions with them and have done some trials to see how we can increase afforestation in the country. There is a challenge in peat based environment because of the nutrients but there are technological solutions. We are exploring opportunities to increase afforestation by 20,000 to 30,000 acres in coming years which would feed into developing that indigenous supply chain.

Mr. Shier will speak on the sustainability of biomass and then I will return to the remainder of the Chair's questions.