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

I take the Deputy's point that LNG potentially has the same emissions as coal. We will not be increasing our importation of LNG gas. That is agreed. We are not going to breach our climate change targets through any of this. That is an absolute given. That will hold firm in any court, in any debate and in any government, whether a future government or this Government. With a State-commissioned facility, we would be within our legal rights to say we would like a given amount of security, for the facility to operate within certain conditions and for it not to use fracked gas. If that is outlined in the commissioning of a project, I do not see a prospect of it being legally challenged. In commissioning, we would be looking for a facility to have certain characteristics. It is just commissioning by the State. I believe it can be done without any fracked gas. The key question here is what type of facility we want and whether, based on the further analysis I have asked the Department to do, we need any facility, which we may not. That would require loads of different elements including further interconnection, better storage and using the new anaerobic digestion source of gas and back-ups in our power stations and strategic oil reserves. There are a number of ways in which we can provide security. That is the key thing we need to look at.

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