Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)

I agree 100%, especially if you look at how the public view any other government waste. We now have a chance at the start of this Government term to bring this in as fast as possible and save us hundreds of millions. I refer especially to projects like the North-South interconnector. We may be hit with EU fines. The recent Spanish grid failure should be a wake-up call for us. We need resilience. The North-South transmission line will also help lower prices by an estimated 5%. That is huge for a family that is struggling.

We also need to make sure that data centres do not use private wire legislation as a greenwashing tactic. Private wires should be used to decarbonise the sector. We have a chance to do this right and we need it to be brought towards a committee for scrutiny as fast as possible.

We cannot talk about climate without talking about Dublin Bay, in my constituency. Dublin Bay recently had a huge issue with E. coli. This needs to be looked at by the Government. It is not happening on the southside of Dublin. It is northside swimmers who are being affected by E. coli.

See this speech in context