Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is correct. The memorandum of understanding between myself and the UK Secretary of State for Energy, Mr. Edward Davey, was a statement of intent on an intergovernmental agreement, which we are required to do under the relevant European directive if we are to open up a traded sector between this country and Britain. It did not deal with the matter of a strike price because it could not. We did not have the information and there was no template to do so when the memorandum of understanding was concluded. Since then, however, we have been working on the matter intensively on our side. It is coming to the stage where that issue will have to be confronted in the next couple of months. As I have said in this House, and Mr. Davey has said in the House of Commons, everything depends on the economics stacking up. We both believe that the economics will stack up because it is a more economic and feasible option for Britain to source energy here than offshore. In those circumstances the expectation is that they will stack up. We are satisfied that we can meet our domestic targets with something to spare. Therefore if we have a capacity to generate more electricity than we need for domestic consumption, it would make sense to seek a market for it. Our country lives by trading goods and services, so if we can open up a new and hitherto unheard of market that brings wealth and jobs to Ireland, we think that is a good thing.

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