Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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There were 12 countries initially signed up to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. Looking at each of them and where they are in what I call the divestment movement, we are probably the most advanced. We introduced an end to oil and gas exploration before the Danish Government and many of the other countries on the platform were aiming to do things we are already doing, such as the ban on fracking and having no investment in fossil fuels for the State investment fund. All of these were agreed on a cross-party basis, which strengthens our joining the movement.

We will still use imported gas in the next two decades and those offshore renewables will need backup.

Part of that will be the need for about 2 GW of flexible, open and combined cycle gas plant. We will use very little gas in them but they are essential to provide cover at those times such as those we saw this summer, early last year or early this year. We need those as well as to shut off coal plant and old oil plant, so we will use gas for this interim period. In my mind, LNG imports will not be needed to give us that security. We can and will be able to use what I see as one of the strategic options, which is using some of the distillate stored that we hold as part of our provisions under the National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, levy to provide back-up fuel for some of those combined cycle gas plants that they can use in the event of an emergency.

We are starting to see the development of alternative hydrogen supplies in the replacement of gas. This is still some years away but it seems to be becoming an ever-increasing certainty. Given we have such large offshore wind resources, to be able to convert some of those through electrolysis into hydrogen to provide some of the back-up security seems to make real sense. I will be looking at the energy security review we commissioned and arrangements we have with the UK and the rest of Europe regarding providing gas security. We need that security and I believe that will give us the best security. In the current ongoing energy crisis, it has been shown that LNG does not give us security because the LNG terminals in north west Europe, which were expecting gas to arrive, found overnight that the ships were turning in mid-ocean and heading to Asia, where the price was dramatically higher and, therefore, you could not count on it. A variety of those arguments will double down and make the case why relying on LNG as a secure system does not work. I will have to make that case and will do so once we have that energy security review but I expect those sort of strategic issues will be centre points.

Regarding the energy charter, I understand fully-----