Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a lot in that question and it is hard to answer comprehensively in the time allowed. I do not think her characterisation of our regulatory structures is entirely fair. They are not perfect but many of them have served us very well in recent years. That is not to say there have not been flaws and failings. It is important to bear in mind that some of these regulators are accountable directly to the Oireachtas and not to the Government. That is the way they have been established and they are held to account through the Oireachtas committee structure.

On energy, the review is under way. Some months ago, Mr. Dermot McCarthy, the former Secretary General to the Government, was appointed to review the regulatory system for energy and to identify why things went wrong and what we can do to ensure they do not go wrong in the future.

I restate what the CEO of EirGrid said this morning. He said it was important to note there is no risk of a system-wide blackout. Rather, there may be periods where total supply does not meet demand. While nobody can rule out the possibility of blackouts over the winter, I want to say to families, homeowners, small businesses and farms that the chances of a prolonged blackout affecting them are very low. Many people are engaging in worrying people about this. We cannot rule it out but the risk of that kind of blackout is very low. If we enter a red-alert scenario, large energy users will come offline first, such as data centres. They have their own generation capacity. It takes quite a lot of events to come together for us to be in a position where there would have to be power cut to homes, firms or businesses. It is important to reassure people of that. It did not happen last winter. Nobody can say it will not happen this winter but it is unlikely.

We do not know everything about this matter but one thing we all know is that fundamentally the problem is inadequate supply and not enough generators generating electricity. We have a rapidly growing population and economy, and because of the need to take climate action, we are moving a lot of things to electricity. There are more electric vehicles, heat pumps, etc. All of those things contribute to rising electricity demand. That demand will rise further. The solution is much more generation capacity. That was licensed and contracted but the generators did not deliver. Now we are in a catch-up phase but we have a plan to catch up and put that generation capacity in place - both renewables and gas, because both are necessary - and to get ahead of this in the coming years.

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