Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I am not an expert on European law. I would have to look to see what the provisions are. The main reason I believe we will not proceed with those terminals is because of the very same energy security reasons I mentioned. Relying on alternative mechanisms would give us greater security. While we need significant open cycle and combined cycle gas plants as back up for our energy system, if we are to meet our climate targets, we do not want to see a dramatic increase in the use of gas. We could not afford to within our carbon budgets. It is those arguments rather than legal arguments that will be the key mechanism to implement what we were very pleased to see in the programme for Government.

Regarding the energy charter, once again we get into very complex international legal issues. My understanding is that the exit mechanism from the energy charter is a 20-year process that is fraught with all sorts of complications and difficulties. As the Senator noted, there are different views in Europe but a large number of colleagues are saying that we should work with it as a mechanism of reform and a way of using some of the provisions it has to support the low-carbon transition. Spain was mentioned as a country that wanted to leave. Spain was brought to court by many of renewable companies because it amended its terms of support for solar power, which was seen by certain players as being deeply unfair, so they used the provisions in that instance to protect the renewable power investment. It is not black and white in terms of how the provisions of the charter are used. The key element is how that can be reformed. It was set up to protect the interests of fossil fuel producers going into and opening up eastern bloc countries and Russia in the early 1990s. The current environment is completely different. Coming out of Glasgow, we are going to see a significant switch away from fossil fuel investment towards investment in renewables.

It has never been intimated to me that any of the decisions we made in recent years such as ending oil and gas exploration, stopping fracking or saying "No" to immediate planning application on an LNG terminal could not have been made for fear of them being challenged in the investor court dispute resolution mechanism within the energy charter. I will continue to watch the way international developments evolve. We will be pushing for it to support the decarbonisation strategy and use it as a tool in that regard. This is where we should go.