Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I welcome Freddie Wasson from Leixlip, a transition year student who is working with me this week. He lost the county final last week and is very disappointed. I hope that working here in the Dáil will improve his mood before he heads back to school next week.

I welcome what we are discussing and I welcome this Bill. As a TD and someone who was elected as a councillor numerous times, I have always called for investment in infrastructure, especially, with my local hat on, in the Leixlip and Celbridge areas where we have had electricity outages. Since I was elected as a TD, we have seen outages in Kildare and nationally as a result of the storms of last winter.

Ultimately, anything that brings extra investment in our electrical system, such as the €1.5 billion we are talking about today and the ability to seek the additional loans required, has to be welcomed. I thank the Minister and his team for their foresight and belief in this. I thank the Minister for Finance for putting this forward on budget day ahead of time, considering the demands.

I am a member of the infrastructure committee, which will meet tomorrow with the housing bodies and the large developers in Kildare, Ballymore and Glenveagh. Their representatives will come to the committee meeting. I know one of the key issues they will be talking about will be Uisce Éireann and the challenges they have with water, but the electricity supply will be a key focus as well.

I have met many developers, no more than other Deputies, and I understand the sorts of issues they face. When houses have been built across north Kildare and elsewhere, we have not been quick enough to get the electricity supply in. That is one of the issues. I hope this legislation will go towards putting in the infrastructure in time to ensure we do not have those delays. My only fear is this: will €1.5 billion be enough to continue with that? I am sure there will be a multi-year approach whereby we will continue to have investment in our electricity system.

Obviously, from a national perspective one of the key items we are looking at changing is how we do our electricity and how we work at electricity. Renewable integration is key. We are talking about offshore electricity, solar electricity and getting everybody on board in that regard. This is key but to do that we need to update our grid. With this extra money coming into the system, we will be able to invest to ensure we can avail of solar power units.

I do not wish to go off topic - perhaps it is in keeping with the topic - when I mention that Freddie and I were lucky enough to be in the new Lidl net-zero shop in Maynooth. We got a tour and we saw how a new development in a new shop with solar panels will be able to be cost-neutral from an energy perspective. I think we have to go that way. As our previous speaker outlined, we have continuing new demands on our system. This is where we have to talk about supporting our economic and digital growth. We all know that data centres will be required. The Social Democrats were talking against data centres and about moratoriums, potentially, being put on them. At the same time, we cannot ignore the reality of the future demand that may be coming with the technological changes we have seen in recent years and continue to see, especially in the new realm of AI investment across the world. We can talk about moratoriums but we need to ensure Ireland is not left behind. This legislation will go towards that. We need to ensure we have an electricity system that is able to keep up with the best of other countries. Countries like Denmark and England have faced many of these challenges. It has been less of an issue in France, which has the nuclear energy option that many other countries do not have and we do not have. Ireland is in a different space but we need to ensure that with this investment we are able to open the opportunities where possible and where we are best placed to do so, and that includes data centres.

As I said at the outset, we need to be conscious of one-off events when we reflect on whether our system will continue to be fit for service in the future. We have climate change and increased storms. There are weather systems that come across, and are probably coming across in the next couple of months. The Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, knows this better than anyone given that his own area was probably one of the hardest hit by the storm earlier this year, and indeed by the outages that were in his area. I know the Minister of State will be looking for this sort of investment to ensure we are in a more robust and better place in order that we can get things back on track sooner, if possible, and in order that networks would not be out any longer than necessary. We can talk about the upfront €1.5 billion investment but by giving the ESB more flexibility to finance its own investments, we can ensure we have the best network possible over the coming years.

This Bill is about building a secure future and a secure electricity system. Once again, I welcome the Government's initiative on this.

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