Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There are two key reasons for those high bills, the first of which is the very distributed nature of our population, which makes it very expensive to provide the grid and other infrastructure to service every house. The other key fundamental is that we are still generating some half of our electricity from the use of gas. Those countries which have a high gas component in their electricity mix are seeing the highest prices. That will change. We are absolutely committed to deliver on the switch to renewables, rather than relying on fossil fuels, to meet 80% of our energy needs by the end of this decade. I am absolutely convinced we can do that. We have been restricted in the last three years by the effect of problems bottlenecking our planning system. This is partly due to the nature of our planning laws not being fit for purpose, which is why it is important we pass the new planning reform legislation we have before the Oireachtas committee in the next two weeks. For various other reasons, An Bord Pleanála was not able to able to make decisions on some key projects. Those decisions are starting to come through now. We are seeing onshore wind farms starting to be delivered. Last year, we delivered 1 GW of solar energy in one year, which is phenomenal. If anybody had said three years ago that we would be rolling out 1 GW of solar a year, they would have been laughed at but it is now happening. That mechanism of switching to renewables is the best way for us to reduce the exposure of the Irish consumer to high fossil fuel prices.

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