Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I welcome the opportunity to say a few words during the debate on this very important topic. The Government has to be ambitious and has to take a leap of faith. When explorers or oil companies go out onto the Atlantic, or wherever they go to explore for oil or gas, they do not know what they will get or whether they will get anything, but they take a leap of faith and they go there. The Government has to do that. Not everything it does will be successful, but it will learn a lot from its experience. This is an ideal opportunity where the Government has to take the risk and lead the way particularly, as Senator Chambers said, in respect of the west and north-west coast. This is where the greatest potential in the world is for green energy.

As the Minister of State said, we have seven times our landmass offshore. There is huge potential there. At the last offshore wind auction, energy was €86 per MWh. That is the cheapest energy that can be produced in the world, and it can be produced along the west and north-west coast. However, we are losing out and will lose to the Scottish. Senator Chambers pointed out where we need the grid. We absolutely need more grid capacity. EirGrid needs to put its plan in place. The Minister of State needs to find out what plan it has, if it has any. The work on that seems to be progressing very slowly.

On the production of energy from offshore wind, we can go down the hydrogen route. There is and will be huge demand for hydrogen right around the world. All the big machinery will, no doubt, be powered by hydrogen, including aeroplanes. We see e-fuels are being used in Formula 1 racing. Hydrogen can be converted into e-fuels that can be used in aeroplanes, heavy lifting equipment and heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, lorries, and maybe buses and public transport, for that matter. The grid is not needed for that. All this hydrogen can be stored in all the gas tanks we have in the country. This is where the Government has to take the lead and has to take a risk.

As Senator Chambers said, we do not want to find ourselves behind in ten years' time. While ten years is not a long time, it is as regards this issue. We could fall very far behind. This form of energy is our oil. We have this "oil" on our coastline. I welcome the auction that took place in the past number of weeks in respect of the east coast, but it all about the east coast and there is nothing on the west coast. I presume that is because of grid connection, in the main.It will take years to get wind up and running on the west coast. If somebody wanted to construct a wind farm in the morning, with planning, you would not see five years passing before the turbines would start turning. That is a very slow process. That is why the Government has to be hands on. While it was said that this is an all-of-government approach, somebody in the Government has to lead the way on this fairly quickly.

I raise the issue of onshore where we have wind farms and solar farms. There is a problem with farmers regarding entitlements and farm payments. I think if more than half a farm goes to wind, the farmer loses their entitlement. Farmers will not go down that road. They do want to lose their entitlements. It is an area the Government has to look into and see what can be done.

I raise an issue I have raised on a number of occasions regarding objections to wind farms or any sort of farm or project. We saw it with the Naas dual carriageway, for instance, where there were objections. Snails held up that dual carriageway for years. There are various other instances. The connection of the road from Ballina to Castlebar and the bridge over the River Moy were stopped because we would have displacement of the freshwater pearl mussel. A wind farm in Mayo faced major objections because it would displace red grouse. The red grouse is nesting now under the wind turbines.

I ask the Department to carry out an assessment of where all of these species were displaced and see whether they are back and what has happened. I asked this on a number of occasions but nobody seems to run with it. All of the species that have been displaced by various projects have come back. On Stephen’s Green, for instance, if there were no buildings and the Government were to put them up today, everybody would be giving out that it was displacing the birds. However, they are all there and eating out of your hand. They have not moved away because of buildings, people, traffic or anything. They have come back. It is an area that should be explored. If species are displaced, do they come back? I would say that they have in most cases. I can vouch for the red grouse coming back to a wind farm where they are nesting now in County Mayo.