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

I believe it will. We can see what happened last year. We have two interconnectors at the moment, one in north Dublin, which comes ashore at Rush and goes across to Wales, and the other in the North which crosses over to Scotland. We are building a new one from Wales coming into Wexford at Great Island. We are also building one from Breast in Brittany in France which will come in near Carrigtwohill and into the Cork network. They are transformative. First, they are transformative in reducing emissions. We do not have the final figures for last year but we will get them shortly, but there was a dramatic reduction in emissions from the power sector in Ireland in part because when the wind was not blowing here, we were drawing power in from the UK in a way that allowed us to meet our needs and also reduce our emissions. We will be able to do that with France and the UK.

We will not stop there. We should go further with another connection with UK and another one with France. I want to go down to Spain and connect with Spain so we can connect Spanish solar with Irish wind. That balancing capability is the new industrial revolution that is taking hold. It is a renewable, low-carbon, electrify-everything future and we will be good in this country. We are already leading in this country in that revolution. It provides nothing but benefit for our people in my mind.

See this speech in context