Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the legislation. It concerns the use of some of the surplus we see coming in through taxation for future long-term investment. This year, we are looking at a budget surplus somewhere north of €8 billion. The intention is to spend 0.8% of our GDP on investment in this fund. That is approximately €800 for every man, woman and child resident in the country.

I want to see this money invested domestically in our economy and not being used to serve the strategic interests of other countries rather than our country. One area where investment should take place is in our offshore renewable sector. Ireland has a 220 million acre maritime resource off its coast. It has the potential to develop 70,000 MW of offshore renewable electricity. This is enough capacity to not only meet Ireland's long-term needs but those of France and Austria. It is a massive resource off our coast but we need to tap into it. The projections are that by 2037, offshore wind development could employ 5,400 people in the Atlantic region, with a financial dividend of €4.2 billion. We need to see part of this surplus being set aside to support the critical electricity infrastructure that needs to be built off our coast to service these potential wind farms.

We also need to see significant investment in the upgrade of our ports. At present, the only port in this country that can get involved in offshore renewable development is the port of Belfast. When I was in Stormont recently, I had the opportunity to meet with senior management in Harland & Wolff, who are extremely anxious to develop beyond their existing footprint in Belfast, and to look at other ports, including Killybegs in the Minister's constituency, in other locations throughout the country. We should now engage with Harland & Wolff, not just on using its knowledge of the offshore renewable energy sector to develop our other ports, but to provide apprenticeships to young people here to access the skills needed to service this infrastructure into the future. It is imperative that we build the capacity here because at present we cannot simultaneously build multiple offshore wind farms from a single port on this island. It is imperative we put that investment in place.

The most effective way for Ireland to take a leadership role in the offshore renewable energy sector is to establish an offshore renewable development authority, similar to IDA Ireland. This is something that was unanimously adopted by Dáil Éireann in December 2021, but which the Government has failed to act upon. This new authority could drive a fully co-ordinated national action plan, with responsibility ranging from research and development through to the supply chain and commercial deployment of renewable energy, ensuring that Ireland becomes the global leader in clean energy and its export. We have huge potential to export the renewable energy we have off our coast. This export is being led by an Irish indigenous company, Supernode, which wants to build a transmission network right across the European Union bringing clean, green energy from wind off the west coast of Ireland into the European grid, and also bringing solar energy from the southern part of the EU into that grid. We need to work with a company such as Supernode to put State investment into a project like that to ensure it is successful and sustainable into the future, and will provide the market access the country needs.

I will raise two other issues, one of which is directly within the Minister's remit, namely, the current deficit in hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, in the European Union. We have huge potential to use rapeseed oil as a seed industry to fuel the processing of HVO in this country. Whitegate has already set up a facility to do that. There is potential to increase capacity in that regard. That requires investment. This fund should be involved in expanding the capacity of Whitegate to process and manufacture HVO. We should use this as an opportunity to generate a cash crop for Irish farmers, moving them away from livestock production to tillage production, and helping to meet the targets for the tillage sector the Government is failing to achieve at present. It is a win-win situation for our environment and our farmers and would create a sustainable indigenous fuel in this country. That opportunity now needs to be grasped with both hands rather than sitting on our hands, which we have done to date.

I will raise a final point. We can talk about these projects all we like, but one of the single biggest barriers to the development of green energy, renewable energy projects, and many other industrial projects in this country, is environmental regulations. The difficulty is that environmental regulations are a black box in this country today. We have to wait for judicial interpretations of our legislation. Whether it is EU or national legislation or regulations, they are mired in uncertainty. Year on year, we have had regulations and directives coming from the European Union. Our own environmental legislation has been introduced. We need a consolidation of all our environmental laws into a single piece of legislation. I ask the Minister and his colleagues to direct the Law Reform Commission to go through each and every one of the environmental laws we have in this country, and come forward with a comprehensive, single piece of legislation that will get rid of the current ambiguity, which leaves every project vulnerable and open to judicial challenge.

Let us take the Judiciary out of this. Let us put it into a single consolidated environmental law.

See this speech in context