Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, Senator McGahon, who is our spokesperson in this area, had to leave. I will provide cover. Like many other countries, we did not scale up renewables when we should have. We have golden opportunities, especially as an island nation, in offshore energy and so on.

My understanding is that this is technical legislation to protect us in case there is an energy supply issue next winter. That is critical because we need to forward plan. Essentially, we do not want to have a convoluted, difficult, complicated and lengthy application process for getting a licence. A streamlined assessment is appropriate, given the circumstances we find ourselves in with the situation in Ukraine and the potential problem that could arise with energy.

The Minister of State will correct me if I am wrong but essentially this legislation is forward planning to next winter. It is ensuring the State agencies are able to respond in real time if an issue is identified. However, as part of that forward planning, we need to do our calculations and estimations. We do not want a situation to arise similar to what happened last December when the HSE rang around private hospitals on a Saturday morning looking for beds for Sunday. We cannot be in that situation. If it means that licences have to be given well in advance to enable companies to be in a position to step in if needed, that should happen. The Department should be proactive and engage now to ensure we are not in caught on the hop, as such.

This is an important area and one I am interested in. Living in Clare, Senator Dooley and I know the huge potential and value of Moneypoint and what can be achieved with renewables there. Perhaps the Minister of State will come to the House in the not-too-distant future for a debate on this issue and provide us with an update on what exactly is happening with Moneypoint power station. I presume it is operating now at full capacity, given the fact that there is an issue there. If it is not, it should be. In the medium to long term, Moneypoint should become a centre of excellence for renewables. We should be benefiting from offshore generation. We have the raw material to do that, being an island nation. We do not have gold, silver or any of the various chemicals that other countries have. However, we have wind and the Atlantic Ocean. We could and should be using that to its full potential.

The Green Party had its think-in in Ennistymon last September. What is happening in a hotel there is phenomenal. Its electricity bill was hundreds of thousands of euro. Its electricity bill is now essentially zero and it is supplying electricity back to the grid. It went through a long, arduous process to achieve that but with energy costs increasing the way they are, it is now in a fortunate position. We should be encouraging other hotels located on rivers to do exactly the same. We should be providing financial incentives for them to do it. That is more of a medium- to long-term process. It is a shining example of what can be done medium to long term. In the short term, this is an important Bill from a national security and an energy security perspective. I am certainly very supportive of it and I hope it gets support across the board.