Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The security argument is being used by the fossil fuel industry to keep western Europe linked to fossil fuel, to keep us addicted to fossil fuels. The biggest security danger is climate change and that is what we need to keep in mind. The answer is to reduce energy usage where possible, which the Minister is not interested in at all given that he has allowed the data centres to keep expanding, and to shift rapidly to renewable energy, bringing increasing amounts of renewable energy onto the grid. Instead, the Minister is locking us into high consumption of dirty natural gas - he cannot give me a guarantee that it will not be fracked gas - for decades to come, hindering State investment in renewables and delaying the transition to a zero-carbon economy. The Minister now says it is all about security, but he told the Dáil that this will also be used for periods when the wind is not blowing. That is not about security.

Not Here Not Anywhere researched this and has not identified any floating LNG terminals which are currently used for the purpose the Minister is talking about. It identified a technical problem with keeping it liquefied. Keeping the gas liquefied requires the use of a lot of energy. Is the plan to keep it liquefied so that it can be brought on stream very quickly or does it go back to gas and therefore need to use a bunch of energy to get it back into liquid form?

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