Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I apologise for having to leave. Professor McMullin's contribution has been very useful and I thank him for answering our questions. I want to come back to the basics on this. Both Professor McMullin's submission and that of the International Energy Agency, IEA, are really unequivocal about us not being able to have extra fossil fuel infrastructure and reach our climate targets. If we accept that as the case, and take it back from there, then Professor McMullin's remarks earlier before I left the committee room about the choices we make as to whether the greater risk is around security or the planet, its overheating, and driving ourselves into a situation where that is unviable are important. Not only since the war in Ukraine but prior to that, I think there is a campaign in this country by certain vested interests to have LNG infrastructure, whether that be in Shannon or in Cork. We are now seeing that campaign continue in light of the new situation that is presented by the Ukraine war. I want to push back against that and ask Professor McMullin to reiterate the climate science on this and how our climate targets would be incompatible with new fossil fuel infrastructure including LNG terminals in this country. That is hugely important to the climate movement and to the people who have been campaigning against this. To scientists like yourselves it makes absolute sense. Security risks and all taken into account, the witnesses have given a very good thread of thought on what these risks might amount to. It would seem to me that they are low in terms of the risks we would be putting out there by creating more fossil fuel infrastructure. On the other hand, we are looking at a boom in the LNG industry across the globe, which is quite frightening. I believe this has already been spoken about. We should try to find a way of measuring those two things against each other. I would very much favour this committee and the body politic really thinking about the science rather than just the minimal security risks.

Lastly, again in my absence, there was talk about the danger of blackouts and supply. However, it seems to come from the same quarters of those who push for LNGs to also maintain the proliferation of data centres and we know how much of our energy supply they guzzle up on an annual basis, and increasingly so. Will the witnesses please comment on those few things?