Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to the Seanad today. It is great to have him here to speak about security of our energy supply, which is so crucial. In his opening statement, the Minister spoke about some of the challenges we face, such as the closure of stations, power stations not coming online and the impact of geopolitics. Energy security is defined as the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price.

In Ireland, as the Minister mentioned, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, manages and monitors our energy and electricity supply, but Ireland is an energy importing economy. We rely on gas and oil imports to meet our energy needs and electricity is mainly from natural gas at the moment. We have increased our renewable energy, particularly wind energy supplies, but on the whole our electricity comes from natural gas. In the past few weeks the number of system alerts and warnings have surged. As the Minister mentioned, EirGrid has confirmed that Huntstown is now operational and that Whitegate in Cork is going to come online but we know that one of the UK-France interconnector cables went on fire. That has a huge impact and the UK has highlighted that it may not have enough energy, and so much of our energy is imported through our interconnector cables.

Last week the Financial Timespositively said that gas prices have tumbled by more than a fifth but they are still far in excess of prices last January. That has to do with geopolitics and with Russia and Gazprom.

If I bring it from the global and European to the local, the Minister mentioned previously that there may be an opportunity for some stations that have closed to support our energy shortages. I represent Roscommon and Galway and I am talking about Shannonbridge, which is less than 10 km from where I live, and Lanesborough. Can the Minister comment on future plans of the ESB for these stations?

Another question I have relates to the SEAI warmer home scheme, which I have recently dealt with and which it is excellent. Funding has been increased for SEAI energy retrofit schemes. More than €100 million has been allocated this year in budget 2021. This is an increase of more than €47 million. It is almost half of the total of the residential and community retrofit budget available to people suffering from energy poverty. The challenge we have is that the works are taking between 24 and 36 months. What are the plans? What goals does SEAI have to shorten that period of time for retrofitting?

Just transition is very important. In our area we have benefited from just transition schemes to support remote working but when it comes to retrofitting of homes, how are we going to ensure that our homes can be retrofitted within the next year? Can we reduce that timeline to say 12 months? Considering the budget has increased, what measures need to be taken?

The third question relates to the system amber alerts. IDA Ireland has commented that this is a serious concern, particularly for foreign direct investment coming into the country. In his opening statement, the Minister spoke about procedures relating to demand curtailment, and that would be to industry. In other words, homes, hospitals, public sector and schools are being prioritised for energy supply. How will that work? When the instruction is given to switch to onsite backup, how much advance notice is given? What plans have been put in place on that? Data centres have energy generators, or should have, that they can rely on, but how much of our other industry can do that? What areas is SEAI looking at?

On renewable energy, the climate action plan commits us to 51% reductions. As a spokesperson on research and innovation, I would like to highlight MaREI, the Science Foundation Ireland centre for energy, climate and marine research, headquartered in UCC with more than 200 researchers and 50 industry partners. Its area of research is energy policy and modelling and energy management. How does that feed into the current policies? As Senator Garvey mentioned, in regard to the Planning and Development (Solar Panels for Public Buildings, Schools, Homes and Other Premises) (Amendment) Bill 2021, at what stage is that? One of the key things we would like to see is the ability for individuals and businesses, SMEs and micro, to be able to generate electricity and feed it back into the grid and do so at a profit.