Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The proposals here today are quite shocking, to be quite honest with the Minister. As far as I can see, some of these generators are going to be run on fossil fuels, apparently railroading all planning guidelines, waiving pre-legislative scrutiny and guillotining the debate. These are the most important values in any democracy. We must give the people the right to speak.

The opportunities this country has are phenomenal. We are surrounded by sea and wind. We have fabulous opportunities with the floating LNG terminal off County Cork. That strong possibility was put before the Minister. Obviously, loads of proposals are put before him. Representatives from a company called Mag Mell Energy gave a briefing in the audiovisual room today and more or less talked about the same thing, that is, a floating LNG terminal. Certain Members had the honesty to come in, which I appreciate, but not one of them would not agree with the experts. The experts were able to take their questions apart quite clearly even though most of them were asking questions they got from telephones or whatever. Still, however, I appreciated that they did come in because we need to have a very strong debate going forward.

We are totally dependent on the UK for gas in this country and even fracked gas, if we are being honest about it.

Of course, that will not be said. We could have our own clean liquified natural gas, LNG, here. The Minister has refused continually to make moves on that. Instead he has some kind of wild idea of bringing in generators run on fossil fuels.

We have had little opportunity down through the years to invest in the future. I was in Northern Ireland recently and saw so many farms with solar panels on their roofs. It is quite a success in the UK. Why have we not gone down that road ourselves? Unfortunately, we left ourselves running behind. There is talk now that the Government is going to pour ready-mix into the pipes in Kinsale. That is an astonishing situation we find ourselves in. If that is the case it will be an absolute disaster for this country, continuing on from many more disasters.

The Government has not looked at the data centres. There is a possibility there. As Deputy O'Donoghue said, with Moffat in Scotland, all it takes is one thing to go wrong there and it will cease this country's operation. We can look at Barryroe, and we have to look at these things going forward because we are importing everything. We are quite happy, and there are a lot of Deputies shouting and roaring in this Chamber while knowing this is going on, but they are not willing to open their mouth about it. When we decide to see if we can source our own little bit of fuel to make sure we are energy independent, there was not a word about it. What we will now have is a load of generators set up all over the place and run on diesel engines. The man who mentioned the white coats was talking right here in the Dáil a while ago.

See this speech in context