Professor Barry McMullin:

I thank Senator Pauline O'Reilly. I might have to follow up with more detail on some of these. I do not have data to hand on the UK LNG capacity. I note the UK pipeline capacity has been reduced recently due to one pipeline being out of action and that has translated into some restriction on supply all the way through to Ireland. In terms of LNG capacity in the UK, I do not have up-to-date figures but I can look those up.

In terms of transmissions losses, the system operator tries to manage the buildout of new transmission capacity to ensure losses are kept within certain limits - the exact numbers can be provided by them later on - but we need to be honest with citizens that a future that involves electrification of heat and transport, quite independently of data centres, will require more transmission infrastructure in order to keep those losses down to management levels. That means more transmission lines, more pylons, more transformer stations. Those are essential to this energy transition and I am not sure that is yet generally understood.

On terms and conditions for large energy users' new connections to the grid, I would not want to pre-empt the system operator, EirGrid, who are the experts in this, but, in terms of conditions for systems stability, these are ensuring that they have their own peak generation capability. I would prefer to see that peak generation capability being progressively required to be in the form of on-site hydrogen storage where the hydrogen is generated - it is green hydrogen - and we start scaling that up over a short number of years. We need, however, to build that in so that their backup generation, which is really system support generation at this stage if it is on-call to the system operator, would be constrained to be zero carbon which, effectively, would mean it has to be green hydrogen at the moment.