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

One of the main things I need to achieve with any legislation we pass is make sure it is legal and not challengeable. It is important that anything we do is non-discriminatory. If we tell Gas Networks Ireland that it cannot connect one customer but can connect another then the customer who was refused connection can legally challenge that. We have to decide what the connection policy for Gas Networks Ireland will be. Do we tell it that it is not allowed to connect anybody else to the grid? Do we tell it not to connect anybody above a certain threshold to the grid? Do we tell it to only connect people to the grid as a back-up rather than as a primary source of power? In other words, do we say that customers cannot have a gas connection if they do not have a sufficiently large electricity connection? The Senator can see that these are complex questions to answer. I am not creating complexity for the sake of it but if we do not answer those questions correctly we will be legally challenged by people who are very well resourced. They will say that they have been refused connection and that such refusal was discriminatory.

This goes beyond national legislation and is a concern for EU legislation. We now have a mechanism, under the gas directive, to do something about it. In fact, we have a mandate and are legally required to implement the gas directive, to make sure our gas grid is decarbonised and that we have a policy on gas connection which does not make it harder for us to meet our objectives. In the meantime, I expect that we will be able to use planning conditions or specific planning requirements to limit the connection of large gas users to the grid where it is an inappropriate thing to do.