Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I understand the committee also engaged this morning with some of the officials from my Department on offshore renewables. One of the things we have been working on, and which we have agreed in the Cabinet subcommittee, is the establishment of new delivery task forces that would accelerate key areas for our climate ambitions, such as just transition, climate communications, and land use review, and in the three more immediately specific areas of the development of offshore renewables, the development of our domestic heating strategies, including what we are talking about today, and sustainable mobility.

The establishment of those teams, which are cross-cutting and bring officials from different Departments together, along with outside agencies and international expertise, means we recognise for the lifetime of this Government, which is the next three years, that we have an immediate delivery issue up to 2025. We must accelerate key elements of what we need to do. For example, in the offshore wind area we need to get phase 1 and phase 2. With phase 3, as the Chairman has said, we must give a clear direction to Europe that Ireland is the place to come for offshore wind. Similarly, when it comes to retrofitting, we need to make sure we deliver on our ambitions for a scale of retrofitting, and we need to look particularly at district heating as well as retrofitting, including existing projects such as taking heat from the incinerators to heat some parts of the Dublin Bay area. All of those projects will have a rapid three-year acceleration timetable, which these delivery task forces will monitor, manage, and oversee.

In sustainable mobility, while we will not be able to build the metro in the next three years, we have a good bit of the Cork metropolitan rail project done. We can accelerate the active travel and BusConnects projects, especially in our five cities, and the Connecting Ireland rural bus transport system. One of the delivery task forces is within the Department of Transport. The leadership group there will look to see how we accelerate. This is all the more important now given what is happening with the rising cost of fossil fuels and the energy security issues. As it happens, today the Cabinet has just approved the decision on phase 1 for the BusConnects project for Dublin. For example, we got a three-year timeline. BusConnects was originally designed to take much longer, but there are some elements I hope we can accelerate to get the sustainable mobility shift the Chairman has spoken about. The real project with my job in the two Departments for which I have responsibility and in working with others is delivering an accelerated programme of works in those areas.

On the energy prices question, the Chairman must ask that of the Minister for Finance. I will be asking the Minister later this afternoon about what exactly is the windfall gain to the State. To be honest, that is slightly false accounting in a way. Yes, it does get State revenue, but we must remember Ireland is 90% dependent on imported fossil fuels for energy. When the cost of energy goes up like that, the balance of payments situation for the State disimproves. That money is going out of the country.

I will give a vivid example of that. Prior to the immediate and recent invasion, Russia was getting in revenue from Europe in the region of €350 million per day from exported gas, oil and coal. An equivalent of this is that the United States of America has delivered a package of support to Ukraine of €350 million, which is not insignificant, but that was a one-day receipt for the oil, gas and coal revenues for Russia. Since the price escalation, that €350 million figure is probably an historical figure and is now probably closer to €1 billion per day, every day, day in, day out.

This is why in Europe there is an absolute clear determination. I recently attended a meeting with EU energy ministers and an International Energy Agency meeting. The real focus there is that we must stop that flow of money. It will not be immediate sanctions on oil, gas or coal because this would further exacerbate our problem and put prices up. The European Council will continue to look at that issue. The underlying strategic imperative on divesting from fossil fuels has never been stronger.