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

EirGrid is a company I have mentioned which is a leading operator in this. It is applying for a 700 MW interconnection with France, which is largely funded by the European Union. We are similarly going to add an interconnection with the UK and that is only the start of it. It is only in the next few years that those interconnectors will start to come on board. This is new cable technology. The reason it is a better economy is that a cable of that size could take up to 2 GW of power and ship power over long distances with little to no losses. That is the revolution that is taking place. This is a new industrial revolution and we are at the equivalent to where somewhere like Birmingham or Manchester were at the start of the last industrial revolution. We have every reason to be at the centre of this.

It will involve other work to get that balancing capability and we will still require fuels. Those will not be gas fuels and they will not be imported liquefied natural gas, LNG, or fracked gas in particular because we have to stop using fossil fuels. This Government will issue the policy statement we have committed to in our programme for Government to say that is not what we support and that is not how we see the future of the Irish energy system.

See this speech in context