Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)

I congratulate the Ceann Comhairle on how yesterday was dealt with. Fair play to her. Bhí sé iontach.

We all know that families are struggling and I heard from across the House, when I was upstairs in my office listening to this debate, about the soaring energy costs and the thousands of people in arrears. I want to push something towards the Minister of State. I am on the climate and energy committee and EnergyCloud came before it. EnergyCloud will try to use the surplus or wasted renewable energy on the grid to heat up a boiler in a house for someone who is struggling. I ask the Department to look into this. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, about this and the Department is looking at it, but it needs to be fast-tracked.

At the moment, every day, on average €2.7 million worth of unit cost of electricity is being wasted due to curtailment and dispatch down. I was at a solar farm recently where the owner told me he has to turn off his farm regularly due to the grid not having the capacity to take the energy being added. I do not understand why we cannot fast-track long-duration energy storage to tackle this, to add to the grid and store the energy so as to level out the efficiency when there is a lack of wind or sun. Gigawatts of wind energy could be added to this country but we do not the grid capacity right now. We have had the ESB and EirGrid in before us. I know they have a huge job ahead of them but I urge that this be done. The legislation proposed today might help them with that.

As everyone will know, private wires was a key priority for me in Government formation talks. I have heard Members of the House talking about this. It is not privatising our grid. It is not like when we changed out from telecoms. It is about removing the monopoly from the grid. It provides an alternative when grid constraints or inefficiency block renewable regeneration of energy. In the right context, they can be used to lower energy costs but it is crucial that private wires serve the public interest and eco-villages. If they are used for corporations, we must make sure they are not used as greenwashing tactics.

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