Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is great to have three of MEPs here. It is a pity that all of the four of them could not be here, but we thank those who are here for being here. Ms Fitzgerald is a former Senator. Mr. Andrews is a former councillor in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and was a Deputy there, along with Mr. Cuffe, where I represented the local authority. It is great to see them all. I thank them for the work that they are doing on behalf of all of Dublin and indeed all of Ireland.

We as a country are so small in relation to the entire size of the European Union and we have much to learn from the things that are happening. There is no point in us trying to reinvent the wheel. I was in Hamburg recently, where I was looking at the energy consumption. They are much more affected by the gas being turned off than we are, because we do not get our gas directly from Russia, even though the markets have been affected.

I know that it is hard within eight minutes to bring up every issue, but I did not hear too much about the whole area of wind energy, both onshore and particularly offshore wind energy and developing it off our coast. We have a vast coast, much of which is relatively unpopulated and relatively empty and much of the time there are great wind speeds. We need not just to develop that as quickly as possible, but we also need also the infrastructure. We need to take the energy that is off the coast and bring it onto the coast, because we would explode the grid if we would try to bring that level of energy onto our current grid. We would have to have an energy superhighway to bring that energy right into Europe and we need the technology to keep that energy viable.

There has also been talk about producing hydrogen, batteries etc. It is all new technology, but 20 or 30 years ago none of us had thought that we would have computers in our pockets that were more powerful than the gigantic computers that were in the Central Bank and the large institutions. Technology will move on but equally, we need to bring all the people with us and to make sure that there are grants for issues like insulating attics, wall insulation and windows. Much of that is going on. We also need to find the labour and the tradespeople. Mr. Cuffe referred to how many advertisements come out and how there are many people but we do not know who we can trust. We and SEAI need to ramp up the involvement of production by reliable people. Maybe the SEAI needs to go into a whole town or a whole estate and say that it is going to go there and that anyone who wants to sign up will get attic insulation, cavity wall insulation, new doors and windows and be done in a programme. There will not just be a financial benefit to that, but there will be the benefit of living in a much warmer, less draughty, less damp house. This can transform people, particularly as they get older when they feel cold and when their mobility may not be that good.We touched on aviation. I am a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications. On sustainable aviation fuel and all the efficiencies, airlines are pretty good at looking at ways of doing things, but lots of efficiencies could be delivered in respect of idling, long taxiing, delays and parked aircraft and so on. Food and energy secruity has been mentioned by the three MEPs already. I thank the MEPs for all they are doing there. I think we need more of this type of engagement with the MEPs, not necessarily on a daily basis, as Mary Robinson said, but certainly even on a quarterly or a monthly basis. We should all talk about climate change much more often. It affects all of us every day.