Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to pick up where Deputy Leddin left off. Last December, Dáil Éireann unanimously passed a motion that, among other things, called on the Government to design a strategy in conjunction with the European Commission to fund and construct an Atlantic electricity interconnector that would connect west coast and south-west coast renewable electricity directly to the mainland European grid. This would provide large quantities of clean and green electricity to the EU and create tens of thousands of jobs along the western seaboard in the next decade, bringing about balanced regional development in this country. That is something that has been talked about for a long time and this is the opportunity to implement that. This measure would also significantly reduce the cost of electricity for Irish homes, providing us with the cheapest electricity in Europe. To do that, we need to establish an offshore renewable development authority to drive the type of change and strategic thinking needed in this country to make this opportunity a reality.

In tandem with that, the Government needs to engage directly at European Council level to push for the need to develop this Atlantic interconnector and connect it to the European grid. In so doing, we would bring Irish-generated clean electricity into the heart of Europe. We will be pushing an open door on this with the European Commission and with our European colleagues but the initiative must come from the Government. I am focusing on this issue because I have personal experience of dealing with the Celtic interconnector and of how imperative it was for Ireland to take a leadership role on that. We brought our French colleagues along that road with us and tremendous work had to be done on that. We did that and we secured the support of the European Commission for it. We need to take a similar approach today if we are going to bring about this project as a reality. The Commission is already looking at having major grid interconnection from the western seaboard to the European grid but we need to see this prioritised because if we get a positive decision from the Commission on this and if we put a strategic authority in place to drive this project in Ireland to develop our offshore renewable energy then we can be to the fore, not just in Europe but globally, in offshore wind technology. Earlier this week the German ambassador went to Cork to meet the researchers involved in this and to meet some of the businesses investing in this. Germany sees the huge opportunity we have in Ireland and it is about time that we took up that mantle and ran with this issue to ensure we can provide the type of interconnection needed to maximise the potential off our coast. In tandem with that, we also need to develop our opportunity with hydrogen, which is another mechanism to transport renewable and clean energy from Ireland to the European energy network. Funnily enough, Ireland is one of the few European countries that has yet to establish a green hydrogen strategy and this needs to happen immediately.

Another issue in European co-operation that I want to raise is rare diseases. Rare diseases are not rare. In Ireland, approximately one in 12 people will at some stage in their lives be affected by such a condition. Some 825,000 people are impacted by rare diseases when family members, many of whom are carers, are included. Sadly, the west and north west have among the highest incidence rates of rare disease in Europe. While most rare diseases appear early in life, with approximately 30% of children affected dying before their fifth birthdays, many of them are not diagnosed until adulthood. There is nothing worse than being unwell and not being believed, even though you know something is fundamentally wrong; except of course if it is your child who is unwell and you are being dismissed by the medics as just another over-anxious parent. Accurate diagnosis is often only made late into the disease. Some 37% of people spend five years trying to get a diagnosis, by which time the patient will have already been treated for many months, or even years, for other more common diseases. This puts an unnecessary financial burden on our health service. We can speed up this diagnosis process through genomics. There is an EU-wide initiative, Beyond One Million Genomes. This initiative brings together 22 EU countries, along with Norway and the UK, looking to sequence at least 1 million genomes over the next period and to share that data securely across Europe.

Ireland today remains an observer country to that initiative. We need to put the legislative mechanism and funding structure in place to become fully part of that programme and to utilise the information that is being generated all over Europe to treat and help our people in Ireland.

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