Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There are two substantial amendments here. The first is to change the EPA Act. This is to allow for the licensing of emergency generators and to allow this to work in terms of planning permission. Currently, under the EPA legislation, a licence can only be granted where planning permission exists. In this case, the EPA Act will be changed to allow for a licence to be granted where planning permission has been disallowed under the emergency provisions introduced to amend the Planning and Development Act 2000.

We are facing an energy crisis. This emergency generation capacity is needed to avoid interruptions to our supply of electricity. To do that, we need to properly license and have planning permission or some form of legal disallowance of planning permission in place for these emergency generators. We need to change the EPA Act to make sure we have a legal basis for doing this. It would be nicer to have more time. I accept the concerns and criticisms from the two Senators that they did not get enough time for briefing. These amendments will be subject to ratification by the Dáil at a later Stage. I am not proposing to withdraw them.

The first is the EPA amendment to allow for emergency generation. The second is the transposition of the final part of the internal market for electricity directive. That is to allow such groups as community energy collectives to manage demand management and to buy and sell power from the grid. This is in response to the European Commission asking us to speed up the final transposition of this directive, which I believe is from 2019. Again, it is an emergency. It is part of the RePowerEU package in response to the Ukraine war that we make sure this energy directive is fully transposed. It is the final part, it is a good thing to do and I am not proposing to withdraw the amendments.