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

I referred to the 2019 climate action plan. In truth, we will have to be more ambitious in many different areas such as agriculture and transport, but also in energy. One of the areas where things will probably advance more quickly than was set out in the plan is that of power generation. While preparing my response to the Senator, I noted that the price of carbon today is almost €40 per tonne. At that price, Moneypoint does not operate. It is outside the merit order. It does not make economic sense. As such, the 2025 deadline is increasingly irrelevant in the context of what the reality is.

The Deputy was partly correct with regard to offshore development being ten years away. Later this year or early next year, we will start auctions for offshore wind on the east coast, but we will not have to wait ten years to start in deeper waters elsewhere and to look at the prospects of floating wind turbines and so on. It will take a long time. These projects are huge. The turbines we will be putting out from the Shannon Estuary into the Atlantic will be far higher than the chimneys at Moneypoint. People in the area know how dominant those chimneys are. The jobs to which the Senator referred, which were created in the late 1970s and 1980s during the construction of the Moneypoint station, will be a fraction of the jobs that will be available not only in the deployment, maintenance and management of that new energy system, but also the jobs that will be created in the context of the use of the power as it comes back in. The real prospect here is not just building energy generation in Moneypoint and elsewhere in County Clare, but bringing the industry to where the power is. That is the prospect that holds out real opportunity and it is why we should be quicker and more ambitious, rather than just accept existing plans.