Ms Andrea Lennon:

On the first question around the target and whether we can go higher and quicker, that is something we are looking at. There are risks involved around both the sustainability of the biofuels we would be ratcheting up and the affordability. We know biofuels are more expensive than their fossil fuel counterparts. We have to keep a watch on that and watch fuel prices generally. The cost-of-living crisis comes to mind. On the sustainability question, we are heavily dependent on used cooking oil imported as a base for our biofuels, particularly biodiesel. There is a risk that the cheaper palm oil is a substitute for that, which gives rise to high-risk land use change in other parts of the world. We are doing a study this year and hope to have an output on that fairly soon. That will inform our thinking as to how far we can go with this after 2025 to 2030, whether we can go further or need to moderate.

On developing these other industries for advanced biofuels and renewable fuels of non-biological origin, green hydrogen would fall into that category. There is a lot of activity and interest from the private sector and commercial entities in investing in this. There is obviously a big price differential at the moment between green hydrogen, because we do not have it produced at scale, and other forms. Eventually we will get to a point where it could in fact be cheaper as a fuel but we are certainly not there yet. We are working with a lot of industry-led groups. The Shannon Estuary task force is another group that is very interested in looking at biofuels and renewable fuels, green hydrogen in particular, for the development of sustainable aviation fuel, SAF. We are aware of that. We are trying to build towards that within the framework of the overall hydrogen strategy that is being developed by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. There will be a consultation on it imminently and it is hoped we will get some interest generated around that. We are also doing a study in conjunction with Northern Ireland under the shared island fund around the regulation of hydrogen. That is looking at how we would regulate that industry for safety or economic purposes. All those things will provide certainty to industry and investors in building up the supply of hydrogen.