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

I absolutely agree. I will speak to my colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform, Deputy Noonan, about those Italian honey bees and see what can be done about the matter.

I hope I will not leave anyone out and will respond to most Senators. I appreciate the comments of Senator Conway. I am glad to hear that the lift at Ennis train station is going to be fixed. The Senator, and a number of others, raised the wider issue of Moneypoint. We are going to stop burning coal, everyone knows that, and we have to do it quickly. There is considerable potential for the Shannon Estuary. Floating offshore wind is not quite commercial yet but it will be in the coming five years. Everyone is betting on it and investing in it. Our sea area is ten times our land area and we have windy conditions off the west coast. It seems to me that the Shannon Estuary is one of the areas where that will come home to roost and whether in the form of hydrogen storage or connecting to the grid at Moneypoint, it will require significant investment, potentially including the use of port facilities to service and deliver the industry in the first place. I mentioned one of the things that will come with that in my earlier contribution. We will need to locate industry close to the power. We will have a competitive advantage in our power supply at scale, approximately 30 GW or more. It is not quite 20% of our energy needs but it is not small. Take, for example, Aughinish Alumina. Instead of heating it by gas, as is done at the moment, can we look to use electricity or hydrogen? Are there other applications that could be applied in a similar way? Similar to what we spoke about in relation to the western rail corridor, my urge is to ask if we can put that location close to the clean power supply, together with other infrastructure, the likes of the harbour infrastructure. In Moneypoint, we have a large quay, a jetty, deep water connection and electricity grid. That is a combination with which we can go to industry players and offer clean power, good logistics and international connectivity. Surely we will create new industry for the west in that way. That is absolutely possible.

I will turn to Senator Murphy's contribution. At the launch in Bord na Móna of the approximately €150 million we are putting into the re-wetting of bogs, the chairman of Bord na Móna put it well when he said that it was an historic day for the company because it was the day it became a climate-solutions company. It is not just those 350 jobs, or the 33,000 ha that will be re-wet, or the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon, it is the potential for future development of the company, the potential investment in new products. Some of it will be power and Bord na Móna will still be based in producing power but it will not be through centralised power stations. We will have to wait and see what those power stations turn into and we are open to all sorts of ideas. Its new business will be a combination of power, carbon storage and the growing of new products in bogs as horticultural produce, as the company is committing to. It will learn. It has been a tough old practice. As I understand, it started with perfumes last year and it was going well until it rained at the wrong time, or the sun came out at the wrong time. We have to learn by doing. It is not easy. I believe in the company and that the people in the midlands can do it. The path to a just transition is to invest in the future and to be good at this.That is what the chief executive and the chairperson said on the day, that is, that the company was now a climate-solutions company. That gives companies a future, and it gives the midlands a real future too.

To respond to Senator Seery Kearney, we will go local. I also attended a BusConnects meeting last night in respect of Terenure and Templeogue. We got right down to the level of local bus stops. While Senator Martin was focusing on bees and so on, Senator Seery Kearney has gone from blueberries to bus stops and BusConnects. This all comes down to the real world and how, in that junction in Terenure, there are two junctions beside each other, with a Y formation. It is really tough. Last night, when I met the various combined residents' groups of Rathfarnham, Terenure, Rathgar and so on, I pointed out that the NTA has done a good job in the consultation. It has been open to listening. This is the third round of consultation and I have encouraged the agency to continue examining every specific area to see what we could still do better. It is a slight leap in the dark. People do not realise the scale of the change that is coming in Dublin. It is very significant and will be potentially really good. It will be really good if it delivers, as Senator Fitzpatrick suggested, a system where people can use car shares or where that 30% of rush hour traffic, which at the moment is caused by us driving our kids to school, may not be necessary. If that happens, villages will be freed up and it will all start to work in a positive way.

I will finish with a message of hope. I do not know about the Senators, and perhaps I am biased because I come from a cycling-campaigning and BusConnects route in my area of interest, but I now see people out there with their young kids trying to get them safely to school. We have an obligation. This is not just about BusConnects or cycling but about creating a public realm that is fairly radically different and that is a safe, healthy, clean-air space. I think that is doable.