Dr. Paul Deane:

I thank Senator Keogan. Respectfully, I cannot answer questions on the Derrybrien project because unfortunately I do not know enough about it. I know very little about it, so I apologise.

I would respond to the Senator's questions about nuclear power by saying that I am a supporter of any decarbonisation option. It is not so much that I am a fan of nuclear power, but that I do not like what the science of climate change is telling us. It is very serious. In a country like Ireland that is so reliant on fossil fuels, we need to keep our minds open to all options to help us to reduce that reliance, no matter how socially or politically unpopular they may be. Nuclear is one of those options. We need to manage our expectations around nuclear. Traditional nuclear plants like Hinkley Point in the UK, or the large nuclear plants they have in France, would not be suitable for Ireland in terms of its size. As Mr. O'Donoghue mentioned, there would also be issues in terms of the build-out time. It would take way too long. The SMR type of nuclear technology that has been discussed may or may not be suitable for Ireland, but again we need to manage our expectations around that. These reactors are conceptual at the moment. They are not commercially available.

Looking at the different peer-reviewed and scientific literature they may not be available until 2030 or 2035. That is at least one or two decades away. That is too far for the current energy crisis. We should keep our minds open, and an eye on that technology, but it is very far away and again we should not let the long-term optimism of that technology blind us to the vulnerabilities we have in the short term. We should keep our minds open on that technology, but the technology needs to be proved commercially viable and, more important, to be socially safe before we start looking at it in Ireland. Wind energy is our greatest strength. We do not have massive fossil fuel reserves in Ireland. We do not have large hydro resources as they have in Scandinavia. We do not have a huge nuclear tradition as they have in France. What we have in Ireland is lots of weather. We have lots of wind and reasonable amounts of sunshine. We have a huge offshore resource. It is our greatest strength in Ireland, so it makes a lot of sense to tap into that strength.

In terms of our overall energy supply, wind will do a lot of the heavy lifting in future. It will get us most of the way there in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, but it will not get us all of the way there. We need to acknowledge that there will be days, often ten days or even a number of weeks, when wind speeds will be low. We will have dark periods, whether it be night-time or winter time when we will need to look at some form of strategic or seasonable storage of energy or electricity in Ireland. There are a number of options such as decarbonised gases like hydrogen, but again I caution that this is a decade or two away. At the moment we are still 86% reliant on fossil fuels in Ireland. We need to have a massive build out of renewables before we get to any kind of serious thinking around the strategic need for energy or electricity storage in Ireland. Our studies in UCC have demonstrated when we simulated lots of different futures on the energy and power system in Ireland that wind can do a lot of the heavy lifting. However, it is going to need something else to step into the breach when it is just not windy and the weather is not there, particularly across north-west Europe. I hope those have answered the Senator's questions.