Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The first question is the nature of the legal agreement between Ireland and the UK on the supply of gas. I will have to consult the Civil Service to give Deputy Stanton an exact answer on that. I do not, however, think it is a gentlemen’s agreement between the two countries. The next question was about the form of liquid back-up for the gas supply plans. I believe it is gas oil and liquid distillate, so it is between those two fuel sources. In regard to how much is available, the National Oil Reserve Agency, NORA, is the statutory body that provides for back-up of liquid fuels in Europe. I believe every country is required to maintain 90 days' supply. That is a mixture of different fuels, everything from crude oil to petrol and every distillate in between. I presume that some of that is allocated but I can get a better answer for Deputy Stanton.

The energy security review is coming up this autumn. The Deputy referenced the national energy security framework, which was published last month. Work has been done on that. The REpowerEU is the emergency response of the EU to this energy crisis. That has been proposed by the European Commission last week and I believe it will be agreed at the European Council shortly. That approaches the problem in three areas. It states we need to do more for energy efficiency; we need to source our fuels from different countries, so we need to attempt to deals with countries other than Russia; and we need to speed up the deployment of renewables in two ways, by providing new sources of finance, including common finance across the EU in green bonds, but also by speeding up the planning process and there are specific rules about managing to be able to deploy renewables much faster than they are deployed at the moment.

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