Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We did that analysis seven or eight years ago. We rolled out a very large testing scheme and the ESB had all the factual analysis. There is an endless amount of economic analysis. It needs leadership now. It needs political leadership to kick the system out of the inertia, conservativism, lack of ambition and lack of energy and start making this happen. We are in severe danger. We were ahead of the game seven or eight years ago but we are now falling way behind. It needs more than just waiting for the energy regulator to do yet another study to assess another study. This has been studied to death, internationally and here at home, for the past five or six years. There is an opportunity for us to get the funding that will not now go to the UK. The European Investment Bank and others spent approximately €3.5 billion in clean energy lending to the UK which will now not go there. If we had ready-to-go big scalable projects in clean energy and efficiency we could get funding from the EIB. We could kickstart our economy and save our emissions but we are not doing it. We are falling way behind. A country that has all of the IT businesses and a good distribution and transmission system should be ahead of the game on this. It is not good enough to say we have to do more studies. It is time for us to start doing something.

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