Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)

The Minister is welcome to the Chamber. This Bill is significant. It will enable the ESB to deliver the largest single expansion and reinforcement of our national electricity network in decades. It will allow the ESB to borrow and invest at competitive rates, strengthening both our grid and our energy security. As a councillor, on 25 November 2024, I had a motion before Roscommon County Council calling for investment in our electricity infrastructure. I am delighted to hear that the Minister is delivering this and that he was listening to that call and the calls of many other councillors nationwide. The level of investment is essential if we are to meet the 50% increase in electricity demand expected by 2035 and to support housing, growth in foreign direct investment and the transition to renewable energy. It is also intended to improve network resilience against future weather events, a point that resonates deeply with my part of the country.

I have spoken at length in this House on numerous occasions about the amount of time we have spent without power in west Roscommon and elsewhere in the western part of the country due to storm damage. During Storm Éowyn last February, 768,000 customers were left without power, some for up to three and a half weeks. I was delighted to hear the Minister announce the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Bill 2025 on 29 July 2025. The idea of it was to bolster the storm resilience of the electricity grid. Yet, when I read the text before us, it does not go into as much detail as I would like to see on the provision of forestry corridors and on powers when it comes to vegetation management. I understand that separate legislation is still pending at the moment, and that delays matters, but people in rural Ireland cannot wait. We are facing into another winter of potential power outages and action needs to be taken.

I acknowledge that this Bill allows the ESB to issue new capital stock to be subscribed to by the Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment, and the Minister for public expenditure at a cost of €1.5 billion. Second, it raises the ESB's statutory borrowing limits from €12 billion to €17 billion to enable delivery of the PR6 investment programme. I am going back to the element that I was hoping to see in this and what communities in the west need, namely, grid resilience in forestry corridors, a compensation framework for affected landowners and a clear statutory mandate for vegetation management around power lines. I am tight for time but when I raised this in a Commencement matter earlier this month, I was referred to this Bill. This Bill was going to address all of these elements. I have heard that we have until tomorrow afternoon to look at some amendments for this. As someone who called for investment, I am fully supportive of the investment in the network, but the resilience that we need from constituents in the west of Ireland is something that I want to see.

I am supporting the Bill on Second Stage because it enables critical investment in our national grid, supports the energy transition and strengthens the ESB's financial foundations. I would like to see it quickly followed by forestry corridor and vegetation management amendments, as we were promised in July. I need to see a timeline in relation to that, if possible. We need a co-ordinated response to protect against storms like Storm Éowyn, Storm Floris and Storm Amy. Storm Floris was only a yellow warning, yet we still had power outages in the west of Ireland. We need a co-ordinated approach on this. I welcome the Bill. I support the Minister on this Bill, but I will have to look at an amendment that may include that tomorrow.