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

The North-South interconnector is critical to improving the efficient operation of the all-island integrated single electricity market and increasing security of electricity supply in Ireland and Northern Ireland. It will also facilitate the achievement of the goal of generating up to 80% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030. A resilient and well-connected energy infrastructure is vital for Ireland's economic well-being and the ability to respond to the future needs of energy consumers.

The option of undergrounding the North-South interconnector has been comprehensively assessed on several occasions. Most recently, the key finding from the international expert commission's report of October 2018 was that an overhead line remains the most appropriate option for this critical electricity infrastructure. Notwithstanding this, I decided to commission a further short review to assess if the overall finding from the 2018 report remains valid. Formal procurement of international experts in electricity grid infrastructure was completed last September. The international experts are continuing their work on the report, which has taken longer than expected, but I hope to receive it shortly.

I am interested to have a discussion. I said earlier that we always look at all options and discuss all energy matters. I would be very interested to hear what Sinn Féin sees, both North and South, as the timelines, the urgency and the preferred models. I have a real fear, across a whole variety of different areas, that we might lose what was seen as one of the significant developments of the last two decades, which was an all-island energy approach and a single electricity market. I fear that if we do not quickly build the scale of interconnection that we need, we will not see industrial development in the North and we will not see economic opportunities, particularly in those Border counties that are most in need and would most benefit from an integrated, synchronised transmission system which can deliver power locally to the people and to the industries that employ people in those areas. This is a critical economic issue, north and south of the Border.

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