Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are getting into some of the key issues there. The Minister mentioned the distributed nature of the population, and we hear that regularly, but there are many distributed populations across the European Union and far geographically bigger countries than Ireland that pay half the price we do for electricity and energy. Therefore, where is the evidence base to that point? On planning and the grid, the sector itself says we are further away from our renewables targets than we were this time last year because of delays in planning and in the grid. There is a massive urgency but we do not see it. We all know the approach to planning reform. It will be difficult and there is lots of concern in this regard. How can we have confidence that this dependence on gas will be addressed any time soon under this Government?

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