Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that the Government is acknowledging that spiralling energy costs will have a very detrimental effect on households across the State. They will have an equally detrimental effect on many businesses across the State and this is not being adequately addressed at all by this measure. I am not suggesting that only businesses should be helped to deal with this issue, but they do also need help with this issue.

This is just one facet of the inflationary times we are living in. I raised this some time ago. For me it is an obvious consequence of the pandemic. I would not blame anybody for the pandemic but, equally, it is considerably exacerbated by government responses to the pandemic across the world. Very few government responses have been as exaggerated and hysterical as the response of the Minister of State's Government. I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, did not determine this response in any way, but he happens to be sitting in that seat right now.

On the issue of longer-term energy security, I have heard a lot of what I would consider aspirational from the Government benches, including Deputy Leddin from Limerick, with whom I would sometimes find myself in agreement. I agree and I greatly look forward to the day when Ireland is providing a huge amount of energy to other countries, and we are self-sufficient in energy. We are not there now, however, and we are not going to be there next month or next year. We are finally accepting now that we are going to have an energy crisis next month and an energy crisis next year, and that we will have a crisis about inflation next month and next year. We are hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with this.

I represent the constituency of Clare. Clare has a long and very proud history of producing energy for the State, in the form of the Shannon scheme at Ardnacrusha, which was hugely innovative when it was developed. It was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, hydroelectric stations in Europe when it was developed. Equally, Moneypoint was also developed in Clare. The two arcs of transmission that go from Moneypoint to Dublin simply could not be built now because they are pylons and we all know there is a lot of controversy around pylons with planning issues, and rightly so. However, they are there, and they are a hugely important piece of infrastructure.

Like Deputy Leddin and many other Deputies who have spoken, I greatly look forward to the days when we are bringing onshore energy from off the west coast of Ireland. We do not, however, have it now. I have spoken to people who are intimately involved in advancing this and trying to develop the potential to bring it onshore. We simply do not have the technology now to generate electricity off the west coast of Ireland. Yes the technology exists for offshore energy, but this is for anchored turbines that are probably suited for construction in the Irish Sea. If one is looking at constructing turbines off the west coast of Ireland it is a very different matter. There are huge Atlantic storms. I do not know if the Minister of State has ever experienced an Atlantic storm or the aftermath of one. I recall the former Ministers of State, Andrew Doyle and Éamon Ó Cuív, who previously sat in that seat. We went to the Aran Islands once in the immediate aftermath of such a storm. It is quite a sight to behold.

We cannot take it for granted that we are going to have the technology to harness that energy, given the huge pressures that are put on during Atlantic storms, or that we will have the technology immediately. Yes, everybody is hopeful and everybody is confident that it can be developed, but it is not there yet. Given that the technology is not there yet, why on earth are we powering down Moneypoint now? I am very proud of Clare's history in generating energy, but I am not proud that Moneypoint is belching out noxious gases into the environment. I am not at all proud of that and I greatly look forward to the day when it is replaced with clean energy, as I am sure the Minister of State is too. However, I accept the reality that it is not going to be today, it is not going to be tomorrow, it is not going to be next month or next year, and that we are going to need energy during all of those times and especially when the wind is not blowing: we also must power the incubators, the hospitals and industries when the wind is not blowing. The advantage that Moneypoint will have, hopefully, is that with hydrogen technology we will be able to bring the energy onshore, and there will be huge, vast amounts of energy that we can turn into hydrogen and store in the form of hydrogen. I welcome all of that as much as the Minister of State does.

I know that the Minister of State welcomes it but what are we going to do now other than give householders €100? With the greatest respect, what the Government is proposing is like a fart in a hurricane. It is utterly irrelevant to the scale of the problem that faces us. If we are going to accept that we are importing energy then we must accept that we are going to import coal generated energy and nuclear generated energy. I do not have the problem with nuclear energy that has been enunciated by some Deputies in this Chamber. If I did I would not turn the light on in the morning. Nuclear energy is coming into the Irish grid as we speak and has been for some time. I am sure it will be coming in for some time into the future.

I do have a problem with coal-powered energy and I look forward to the day it is replaced. I live in the real world, however, where it is not being replaced today and it will not be replaced tomorrow. Instead of generating such energy here in Ireland and instead of having some degree of energy security in the State, we are at the mercy of other states. Some of those states are close and friendly states, we hope, but others are further away, and may be regarded as far away places of which we know little. They may take a similar view of us, or they may not. It beggars belief that in the face of an energy crisis we are powering down power stations in Ireland and importing exactly the type of energy they are producing.

7 o’clock

I cannot emphasise enough that we are not enemies on this. I am not opposing the green vision for the future. I welcome it and wish it had been done ten years ago, as does the Minister of State, where the technology exists. The technology to generate offshore energy where the turbines are anchored is around for some time now. There is nothing particularly novel about it. There is no reason we could not have more offshore energy in Ireland. We are talking about offshore energy primarily from the Irish Sea, which is going to bring objections as well because it will have to be closer to shore than the type of offshore energy we are talking about off the west coast.

We need to be realistic. The technology we are relying on to power our State is not there yet. There is an expression in many parts of Ireland - I do not know if the Minister of State is aware of it - "live, horse, and you'll get grass". That is what we are doing with regard to energy. It is simply not good enough. There is a lot of hyperbole going about, celebrating 100 years of the State. One of the first priorities was to power this nation. If we cannot power this nation ourselves, really we have no degree of independence or self-sufficiency and we have utterly failed. It seems to me the failure continues in both the aspirational approach - aspirations I agree with but we have to deal with here and now as well as how we transition to something better - and in the failure to have a larger energy debate. No matter how much wind energy we bring in, and I am hopeful the technology around converting energy into hydrogen might be the solution, we really have to look at other alternatives.

A woman came into my constituency clinic who was objecting to a wind farm. I do not object to wind farms per sebut I am very concerned when they are built at a height. I live close to Slieve Aughty and I know what happened in Derrybrien. It was an absolute disgrace. The only thing that was worse than it was the State's response. It had to be brought kicking and screaming to the European Court of Justice - twice, I believe. The situation has never been remedied. Now we are proposing to do something similar. We had a recent landslide in Leitrim and we are proposing to build other wind farms at a height. Absolutely there is a place for wind energy. I asked this woman who was opposed to wind farms what she thought of coal generation. She said it was awful. I asked her about nuclear; she said it was even worse. I asked her what was the first thing she did that morning and she said she turned on the electricity. I asked her where on earth she thought her electricity comes from. I was not re-elected possibly as a result of comments like that but I stand over it.

I know it is a glib point to make but we do need power. It is going to come from somewhere. No more than talking about data centres, as long as they are not in Ireland they are not a problem. We have to be real. We have to have energy. We have to have the least environmentally damaging type of energy possible as soon as possible. In the interim, we have to be secure and we have to have energy security. We do not have it and I do not see any sign of addressing it. That is a massive concern to me.

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