Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action decided to waive pre-legislative scrutiny for this Bill. It was appropriate to do so. It was certainly not a unanimous decision but given that it is emergency legislation, when we were asked, I think that was the right thing to do. However, I must agree with Deputy Bacik that the committee should not have been in the position where it was asked at the eleventh hour to make this decision. We need to be more strategic about taking these decisions. That said, I recognise that these things often arise very urgently and sometimes there is no choice but to make that request.

Generation capacity is critically important. We do not want to be building fossil fuel infrastructure. It will make achieving our climate targets harder. We are trying to reduce our emissions in energy generation by 75% based on 2018 levels by 2030. However, I recognise that this is capacity generation, that is, generation for situations when we do not have the renewables. It will actually help us build out the renewable generation portfolio that is in the pipeline, whether wind or solar. I note that 65% of our electricity comes from wind. That will not always be the case. In future, we may have a situation where 80% or 90% comes from wind but the following day there may not be the renewables there and we will have to rely on fossil fuel generation.

I welcome that there is a sunset clause and that the legislation winds up in 2026. By then, we will have had a few years of developing renewables and we should have got to the point where we are largely a renewable-electricity driven economy. The huge opportunity that this State has, as others have mentioned, is in offshore wind. Members across the House have alluded to the lost decade. I would argue that it is a lost 15 years. The Arklow Bank project dates back to 2004. We were one of the first in the world to develop offshore wind, and then we stopped abruptly and decided that it was too difficult and that gas and oil were too cheap. As a State, we took our foot off the pedal. Now we are in a situation where we are trying to develop offshore again and unfortunately it is much later than we would have liked. I believe we will become world leaders in time, albeit that we are coming from behind. We are going to catch up with Scotland. It is well ahead of us, ten years ahead. Deputy O'Rourke, myself and others on the committee visited the very impressive Moray East farm off the coast of Aberdeen.

I am out of time so I will wrap up there. I do think that we will be world leaders. I welcome the Bill but I do not think that we should have been in this situation.

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