Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)

There is no dispute within my Department and the Secretary General is a very committed public servant who I work with extremely well. We are all in agreement that we need to expand our energy generation through renewables, which we are doing, and improve our grid resilience and the capacity of our grid across the country. This is what we will be doing to ensure that we can meet not competing demands, but demands across all sectors. Housing for our people is fundamental. It is never in question.

Deputy O'Gorman stated that our digital economy was now well supported by that 21% of energy it was using. I am assuming by him saying this that he supports this happening or would he reverse that? Our job is to ensure we expand renewables in particular. While respecting the planning decisions recently made by An Bord Pleanála, some of those projects are now out to further information, which will delay their commencement, but those ORESS 1 developers are still committed to developing those offshore renewables.

We learned a lot from that. We also have the south coast DMAP which went through without a judicial review. The accelerated national DMAP which will be completed by 2027.

Let us not forget about onshore. There is significant interest in the next auction this year. There will be significant participation in onshore wind and onshore solar. Look at what we have been able to do on solar - in 2018, 0.6% of energy was generated through solar in this country. Now, on a good day it is about 14%. The average in the last full year was just over 3%. It is growing and growing. That is clean, green energy, it is our energy, it is sustainable, and it is reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and on others for supplies of our energy. The Greenlink interconnector from Wexford to Britain is now electrified. There will be completion shortly of the Celtic interconnector. All that energy infrastructure has been put in place. There is no question of us increasing our dependence on fossil fuels. We are moving on and will continue to do that.

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