Mr. Brendan Tuohy:

In the longer term, and medium term, the idea of having independent generators everywhere does not work. As one must, we are responding. The time lag from agreeing on infrastructure to delivering it can be quite horrendous for various reasons, including the judicial process and the planning process. The demand is growing fairly quickly. We can see the demand there. What Deputy Dooley is talking about is a short-term solution. Obviously, it is not the long-term solution.

More generally, technology is having a big impact. One will see, although not today, on the system part of what we are trying to do. One will see the impact that technology has and see the demand-side management as well. Then one will see the challenges we must face, even for some of the new data centres or extensions to existing data centres where they will move from a so-called "firm connection" to a much weaker connection so that they will not be guaranteed the power at a certain time and will have to make their own arrangements.

The gas generator the Deputy talks about is not an ideal situation. We want the grid to provide in the normal way but then we also, as I started out by saying, want to transfer up to 70% of that to renewables. That will be challenging.