Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the cross-party joint committee on cancer for the excellent presentation today. I thank the Irish Cancer Association. It was informative. It was great that we were all together on a cross-party basis. This is breast cancer awareness month. One in seven women in this country will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. It is a serious issue and it is important that we as a Government take it seriously. The Irish Cancer Association had a request about maternity leave. It is important that people do not lose their benefits. It was interesting that men do not lose their paternity leave when things happen in their lives. There is real inequality in this situation. A quarter of women are diagnosed with breast cancer when under the age of 50, yet our screening programme is for women over the age of 50. The bare numbers of people who are being diagnosed have to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

I raise the issue of green hydrogen. I was in Scotland over the weekend with some of my colleagues from the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. We visited a hydrogen service station. We are delighted that we have a pilot programme ready to go in Galway. Many service users are on board with the programme, such as Bus Éireann and SSE. They are looking for a way to deal with curtailment of the wind farm in Galway. It is significant that the Port of Galway said it can allocate space in the centre of Galway. Green hydrogen is not a solution for everything but one only has to look at the sectoral ceilings which have been announced to see that it is a significant part of the solution to security of supply. Our offshore and onshore renewable energy can be converted into green hydrogen for storage purposes. Many services across the country, including long bus journeys and hauliers, can use green hydrogen. I encourage everybody to get behind this project and a number of other pilot projects, such as at Mount Lucas. It is only by doing that we will learn. Pilot projects are the way to go with regard to green hydrogen.