Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are talking about a length of time that is unacceptable. It would be good if we were going to be as quick with these types of schemes as we were to shut down Lanesborough and Shannonbridge power stations. To give the House another bit of history in this regard, this situation reflects what we did with the sugar beet industry. We made a decision, based on some desktop survey that was done, that closing down the sugar beet industry was the right thing for this country, for Europe and for people in general. What we actually did, however, was to create something else entirely. We created farming which was unviable. There were no more cash crops. All the farmers in Galway East, Galway West, Roscommon and south Mayo went back to beef and sheep. There is no tillage. This was a huge mistake and we have just repeated it here with the Shannonbridge and Lanesborough power plants. It is a classic example of people not understanding the consequences of making decisions. Peat milling is another aspect in this regard. We are now importing water and turf mould from the Baltics to take care of the horticultural industry here.

To come back to the point at hand, it is important to say that when we make a dramatic decision to close something down, in my book, and given my background, it would always be better to make plans to put the replacement or substitute in place and have it up and running prior to cutting off something. In this regard, we are a long way behind the curve in offshore energy and its delivery. We are pushing wind farms into communities where these turbines, which reach hundreds of feet towards the sky, are causing great distress. Instead, we should be putting in place a quick solution to get offshore energy on the way.

This is emergency legislation and it is being brought forward because we have an energy shortage crisis. I accept this point. However, we should have more emergency legislation to ensure we can actually build out the infrastructure and the grid we need to replace what we have cut out. We should bear in mind that we will be relying on electricity for everything in future, from heating our houses with our heat pumps to driving our electric cars and other transport vehicles. Everything is going electric. The demand for electricity is rising and yet we are plodding along, maintaining the status quo. We are not taking into account the fact that our population is rising and demand is increasing.

We face many challenges and emergency legislation is required. Since February 2020, we have seen much emergency legislation coming through the Houses, some for the good and some for the bad. We need more emergency legislation not only for electricity but also for housing. We talked today about housing and the crisis in that regard, but the electricity aspect goes hand-in-hand with that. Instead of having policies, reports and reviews of legislation, if we do not grab this issue quickly and question how we are going to do things, this will go on for years.

It is important that we take this seriously. We cannot keep going on the way we are going. We must make sure that we build the capacity to meet the demand. We must get in front of the demand and create the infrastructure so that we are not giving out about having data centres in Ireland, as we will have the green energy to fuel them if needed. We are getting to a stage where we are dividing up what we are doing and we are trying to keep ourselves going on a piecemeal basis. I accept that we need energy security, but we must preplan and make sure it is there when we need it.

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