Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, and his officials to the House.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to address the House on Second Stage of the Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026. As Senators are aware, the main purpose of this Bill is to provide for a project-specific, bespoke consenting pathway for the strategic gas emergency reserve facility to be located at Cahiracon in County Clare. This will enable a development consent application to be submitted later this year, which will be critical in achieving the accelerated delivery of this project.

Before outlining the provisions of the Bill, I will speak on a number of key points relating to the development of the legislation. Back in March 2025, the Government approved a State-led strategic gas emergency reserve. This is critical to securing Ireland's energy system as we continue to transition to indigenous, clean renewable energy. Crucially, this strategic gas energy reserve will also ensure Ireland's compliance with EU standards and regulations.

The strategic gas emergency reserve will be a State-owned gas storage facility that will provide the resilience required to support our energy transition. This State-led strategic reserve will store liquefied natural gas, LNG, for use only in the event of a disruption to gas supplies to protect Ireland's citizens, economy and reputation from the possibility of energy curtailment. It is not intended for commercial use and will not act as a new entry point for gas into the system. The final design will be scoped to provide sufficient supply to protect households and businesses consumers in the event of major disruption to subsea gas pipelines. Gas Networks Ireland will ensure that appropriate contractual arrangements are in place to refill floating storage and regasification units throughout an emergency situation, providing consistent gas supply for the duration required.

The introduction of bespoke legislation was agreed following advice from the Office of the Attorney General to reduce the uncertainty of the timelines regarding planning decisions and to facilitate the request from the Government to expedite delivery of this project. The ongoing phased commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 at this time prevents the project benefiting from the required expedited decision timeframe to deliver this project. The conventional planning route under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, has been fully considered and it is proposed to disapply it, given the need for an expedited decision timeframe to deliver this project.The legislation will allow for the next stage of development of the strategic gas emergency reserve. It is intended to submit the development consent application by the end of 2026 in order to achieve an accelerated project delivery timeline. It is intended to bring forward a memorandum for Government later this year to request permission to draft the strategic gas emergency reserve (operational) Bill to provide for the operation of the strategic gas emergency reserve. This will be a substantive Bill that will address provisions relating to the operation, use and cost of the reserve, as well as a number of policy matters previously raised by Oireachtas Members.

The Bill before the House contains seven Parts and 38 sections. I will provide a brief overview. Part 1 comprises four sections that contain standard legislative provisions that cover the Short Title to the Bill, the commencement procedures, the definitions of terms used in the Bill and a regulation-making power, as well as enabling the expenses of the Minister to be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas.

Part 2 contains three sections relating to what comes within the scope of designated development. Section 5 provides for what constitutes designated development for the purposes of the development and use of a strategic gas emergency reserve to be located at Cahiracon in County Clare. Sections 6 and 7 provide that the Planning and Development Act 2000, the Planning and Development Act 2024, and Regulation 2 of the European Communities (Birds and Natural Habitats) Regulations 2011 are disapplied in relation to designated development, to facilitate the alternative consenting process set out in the Bill.

Part 3 contains four sections relating to the seeking of approval to carry out designated development. It provides for a mechanism for pre-application consultation. The required contents of an application are specified. as is a requirement to give public notice of an application and details of the public consultation procedure. The section sets out who may submit an application for designated development under this procedure, being limited to Gas Networks Ireland or such other public bodies as may be prescribed.

Part 4 contains 17 sections relating to the environmental impact assessment and appropriate assessment procedures that will apply to an application for designated development. These assessments shall be carried out by An Coimisiún Pleanála within specified accelerated timelines. It provides for a period of 18 weeks for a decision to be made by An Coimisiún Pleanála from receipt of an application to final decision. Time when An Coimisiún Pleanála is waiting for a return of further information by the applicant will be disregarded towards this overall time period.

Part 5 contains three sections relating to the determination of an application for approval to carry out designated development.

Part 6 provides for miscellaneous provisions relating to designated development granted approval under this bespoke process. Section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 is disapplied to relevant bodies performing functions in relation to designated development. The Minister may also issue a direction to competent authorities responsible for the granting of relevant consents, to facilitate priority consenting of the project. The judicial review and access to justice provisions have been adapted from the Planning and Development Act 2000, retaining the well-tested framework that currently applies to a challenge to a planning decision in the courts.

Part 7 contains one section relating to a consequential amendment to the Environmental Protection Act 1992. I commend the Bill to the House and look forward to the debate.

Mark Duffy (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here for the Second Stage debate on this important legislation. I wish place on record my support for the Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026. In recent years we have seen the politicisation and weaponisation of gas, be it the supply we have coming in through the North or transatlantic threats off our coasts.In Ireland, we have 20% of supply coming from our own county of Mayo through the Corrib field and 80% coming from the North Sea, which comes in through Northern Ireland. While we are moving to a decarbonised economy and country, gas and the supply of it underpins all of that. When the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, we need to make sure that we have a solid supply of it. Seeing the weaponisation of that on the continent of Europe poses a real risk to supply for our hospitals, schools and homes.

It is important that we make sure that we have backup supplies and reserves to make sure that the country can continue to tick in the event of major disruption. The world has become more polarised, particularly within the past ten years, and we need to make sure that we can stand on our own two feet as much as possible. This legislation will help support that.

I hope that the legislation moves through swiftly and is supported broadly. It is a mature and responsible thing to do for the State to make sure that we have good security and responsibility into the future.

On behalf of the Fine Gael side of the House, I support the Bill.

Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for comprehensively outlining this important legislation that we are here to discuss.

The Minister of State has my full support in this legislation. It is timely. The Government made a decision in March 2025. When that decision was made, we clearly understood the need for resilience and the need to protect the interests of the State, but the Government could not have foreseen the situation that emerged, particularly over the past couple of months, when the energy supply has been weaponised by those who seek to destroy this country and our peace, security, stability and prosperity. We need to be mindful of the risks that are out there. We are a neutral country but we are part of the European bloc. There are very strong forces afoot that are trying to weaken and destroy us. Energy security is a part of that. We are insecure in our energy supply - there is no two ways about it - but I am glad that the Government is addressing it. It is the mature, responsible thing to do to protect the good lives that we lead in this country. We are doing so in conjunction with developing renewable sources of energy as well. This is not a question of putting all of our eggs in one basket, but resilience requires us to develop this LNG storage facility.

I commend the Minister of State on the work that he has done. I look forward to the debate and all Stages of this Bill progressing because we need to move swiftly. The Government has moved swiftly since taking that decision. This is a positive step but we need to get going on it because time is of the essence.

Joanne Collins (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister of State to the House.

Energy security is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of any government and people rightly expect, when they turn on the lights or when they open the doors of their businesses, that the electricity will be there for them. Unfortunately, that confidence has been undermined for years and it is down to Government failure. We find ourselves debating legislation because of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments that have failed to properly plan for Ireland's energy future. They have left Ireland dangerously dependent on imported fossil fuels and overly reliant on a single piece of infrastructure, the Moffat interconnector. That vulnerability should have been addressed years ago.

Nobody disputes that Ireland needs to strengthen its energy security and the 2023 energy security review recognised that a strategic gas reserve may be necessary to ensure secure supply in the event of catastrophic disruption. We have seen the disruption in this country as a result of the Strait of Hormuz being closed.

Sinn Féin accepts that protecting our energy security is a legitimate objective. However, this Bill is not the legislation that Ireland needs. Instead of delivering a genuinely State-led strategic reserve in the public interest, the Bill opens the doors to commercial LNG. That is a significant departure from the recommendations of the Government's own energy security review, which review envisaged a State-led facility operating solely for strategic purposes.Energy security should never become an opportunity for private developers to profit. Decisions of national importance should be made in the interests of the Irish people and not those of corporate shareholders.

Equally concerning is the Government's proposal to disapply elements of the planning Acts. We have spoken about this plenty of times when discussing wind energy and other planning matters. Communities need to be on board. They need to be consulted. They deserve to be heard. The people of County Clare deserved meaningful consultation before the location was announced. Good planning is not an obstacle to progress. It builds trust, strengthens projects and reduces the likelihood of costly legal challenges further down the line. We have seen lots of those over the years because we did not listen to communities and bypassed certain areas.

Ordinary households are going to be expected to pick up the bill for this. Our understanding is that the operation of this facility could cost anything up to €60 million a year with those costs covered by levies pushed onto families and businesses that already have some of the highest energy bills in Europe. They should not be asked to pay more because this Government has failed to plan properly over the years.

The truth is that Ireland remains one of the most fossil fuel-dependent countries in Europe. We import virtually all of our oil and coal and the vast majority of our natural gas. That leaves us exposed every time there is international instability or conflict. We have seen the consequences this has had over the years. Global events have translated directly into soaring energy bills for workers, families and businesses across Ireland.

This dependency was not inevitable. Ireland possesses one of Europe's greatest renewable energy resources, our offshore wind. If the Minister of State were ever to take a trip down to Foynes in County Limerick, as he may have already, Pat Keating of the Shannon Foynes Port Company will tell him about the amazing project the company wants to get off the ground. We need to tap into things like this. The country could not only be energy independent but a major exporter of wind energy.

Progress is painfully slow, however. We have been waiting for designated maritime area plans, DMAPs, for years. This process has only started. It started on the east coast, on the other side of the country, despite there being a plan and strategy for the area outside the estuary in County Limerick on the west coast. We are now waiting for the process to move around. By the time it does, the funding stream from Europe will have stopped and we will have to wait for the next funding stream. Everything seems to take so long. When there is such a good idea, we should move with it and go at pace to get these projects up and running and to get the funding in.

Sinn Féin believes there is a better way. I have said there is a better way through offshore wind, but we also support greater public investment in and public ownership of renewable energy infrastructure. We want to see more community-owned and locally owned renewable projects so that the wealth generated by Ireland's natural resources benefits Irish people rather than flowing overseas. A secure energy future should be built around renewable energy, democratic accountability and public ownership, where appropriate. That is how we can reduce emissions, strengthen our energy security and bring down costs for consumers for the long term. Energy security is too important to be left to commercial interests. If a strategic gas reserve is required, it must be genuinely State-led, subject to full democratic oversight, developed with proper community consultation and operated solely in the public interest. It must not be a back door for commercial LNG and it should not result in even higher energy bills for households that are already under financial pressure. This Bill fails those tests. For those reasons, Sinn Féin cannot support the legislation as currently drafted. We will continue to argue for an energy policy that delivers genuine security of supply while accelerating Ireland's transition towards affordable, publicly accountable and renewable energy independence.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I will share my time with Senator Stephenson. Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. It is an old joke that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy, Roman or an empire. The strategic gas reserve suffers from a similar misnomer.Our continuing dependence on fossil fuels for energy security is not strategic, and the gas that will be stored at the envisioned facility will be far from a reserve. From the very outset, it will become part of our everyday energy mix. I have highlighted this many times in the Chamber, as has my Labour Party colleague Ciarán Ahern in the Dáil. It will be used in our energy mix because LNG requires venting in order to remain usable and safe. It will need to be vented, either into the atmosphere or into the system. Obviously, it does not make sense to vent gas which is acquired at such a cost to the economy and the earth into the atmosphere. Therefore, we will vent it into the system. We are going to use the gas. That is the logical thing to do once we have the gas and it needs to be used.

The problem is that when we vent the gas, we will need to refill the tank. In order to maintain a seven-day supply of LNG, we will need to replenish the floating storage unit at least six times each year. It is not a reserve; it is intended to be part of the general energy mix. Even if it is used only at an absolute minimum level to keep it safe, we will discharge the daily equivalent of 10 GW to 30 GW of hours of energy into the national network. It is clear that the environmental arguments are failing to have any influence whatsoever on the Government. The influence of the Green Party is severely missed. The deal that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did with the rural Independent Deputies really is as bad for the environment as many of us feared, particularly where I live in the north west. There is no coherent strategic thinking regarding the environmental emergency in which we find ourselves.

Does the economic strategy make sense? The economic case for an LNG terminal was made in April 2024 at a time when the price of LNG delivered to the EU was on a downward trajectory. The price for a megawatt hour was just under €23 in February 2024. In March 2026, just two years later, it climbed to €55.20, an increase of more than double. The experience of Germany, which spent an initial €2.5 billion on four floating storage regasification units shows how the costs spiralled. Germany has to keep committing an amount of €4 billion to keep these units operational, with no benefit to the German consumer in terms of electricity prices. There has never been a clearer case of supply and demand affecting price than the impact which conflict in oil producing regions has upon the price of energy. If the economic case made strategic sense in April 2024, it does not make sense in Trump's 2026.

It has never made sense, from the point of view of military security, to have floating gas terminals. Attacks on Russian and Qatari LNG infrastructure clearly demonstrates the truth of this assertion. It does not make sense to depend on LNG from the Middle East, and it does not make strategic sense to make ourselves even more dependent on America than we already are. What does make strategic sense is investing rapidly in indigenous renewables and a combination of offshore and onshore wind, along with solar and tidal energy, and when the wind blows or the sun shines, save that surplus as a reserve. Gas, particularly LNG acquired by fracking, does not make sense as a strategic reserve. We need to see quick action, not on a strategic gas reserve but on a strategic renewable reserve. I really hope the Minister will listen to what I am saying. I am like a broken record in here talking about this, because it affects me so much where I live in the north west.

Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)
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The Government's handling of this legislation has been appalling. Not only is it preposterous that a Bill that will see almost €1 billion being invested in fossil fuel infrastructure is being rammed through the legislative process with little opportunity for proper scrutiny; it is also ludicrous that we are even debating such investment in fossil fuels in view of the scale of the climate calamity we are facing. This is not a future problem; it is a problem of today. The climate crisis and climate breakdown are very much on our doorstep. Anyone who goes out into nature can see that at first hand. As we speak, Europe is quite literally being scorched by extreme temperatures, which is wreaking havoc on healthcare, energy and transport systems. Schools are closing. Vulnerable people are dying as a consequence of the climate change we are seeing. Scientists tell us that this is direct result of a climate crisis driven by the burning of fossil fuels, yet here we are being asked to sanction a €1 billion investment in LNG. This is, quite frankly, a betrayal of our children and the generation that will come after them.

There are warnings that we cannot reverse this and that we will see an increased frequency and intensity of heatwaves in Europe, which is warming at more than twice the global average. Within the next decade, global temperatures will likely increase by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This is the critical tipping point identified in the 2015 Paris Agreement that will have devastating consequences for humanity. Despite the scale of climate catastrophe we are hurtling towards, the Government appears to be the victim of a sort of climate fatigue or, perhaps, cognitive dissonance, with its head in the sand pretending it is not happening.Not only has the Government conceded that we are not even going to get close to meeting our 2030 emissions reduction targets, but we continue to see it rowing back on climate ambition, not least through the disapplication of climate laws and biodiversity protections when they are inconvenient, which we seem to be doing with this legislation. I feel that the Government's failure to explicitly state in this legislation that the LNG terminal will be State owned and State led and not for commercial use is taking us for fools. If it is going to be State led and not for commercial use, then the Government should just put it into the legislation. It is quite simple. We can then trust that the protections exist. We can be forgiven for not trusting that this will be provided for at a later stage, given that there has been a complete lack of transparency thus far and we have seen the rollback of key climate provisions. It is hard, therefore, to have any faith that these protections will somehow manifest in legislation down the line.

The Bill speaks to a broader mismanagement of demand of our energy system, with the Government consistently prioritising the needs of energy-hungry big business and corporate interests over those of ordinary households and our environment. The reason we apparently need this €1 billion LNG facility is to safeguard supply, but we have large energy users, like data centres, that have proliferated in the State, driving up prices for consumers. The environmental impact of these resource-intensive data centres is stark and their energy needs are outpacing the development of new renewables. According to new figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, for 2025, data centres now account for almost one quarter of Irish electricity usage, and this is set to increase to one third by 2030.

The stark reality is that we are now a cautionary tale for the rest of the world in how not to manage energy. We heard this from the UN report. The public did not sign up for this or for having the highest energy prices in Europe. It is the public who have to foot the bill for these data centres and it is again the public who will have to foot the bill for the €1 billion LNG facility, which could actually be used by private companies for their profits, because there are no protections in this legislation to stop that from happening. I do not see public or community buy-in for this approach. Why has the Government decided to steamroll any attempt to include safeguards for the public interest and the environment in this legislation with the promise that we will get protections further down the line instead of just putting them into the Bill in the first place? There has not been sufficient transparency and sufficient consideration has not been given to the alternative approaches to account for our national climate objectives while the world burns. Watching Europe on fire, and the heat in our own communities, I feel a degree of existential dread about the future of the climate, of our environment and of our humanity in the current context we are seeing. I cannot fathom why we would not have any protections in this legislation if the Government also felt any concern about the climate.

Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the members of St. Finbarr’s GAA club, who are guests of Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire. They are all very welcome and I hope they enjoy their visit to the Houses of the Oireachtas today. I call Senator Higgins.

Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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This legislation, which seeks to allow for the accelerated development of an LNG terminal by bypassing key planning and environmental processes, is a misguided, dangerous and reckless move by the Government that threatens to lock us into increased fossil fuel usage for years to come. During pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill in the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, of which I am a member, the report we produced highlighted and noted that there was a significant divergence between the departmental officials and other witnesses who spoke "to the major climate, legal, social, and governance risks in the proposed legislative approach." These witnesses said, "Recurring concerns centred on compatibility with climate law, legal soundness, planningsystem integrity, demandside management, commercial LNG risks, and impacts on local communities." That is just to give a small set of concerns. They also included security risks. All of this was highlighted by the committee in its report.

This was alongside a number of recommendations that have not been taken on board and are not reflected in this legislation. The committee called on the Government not to disapply the planning Acts and the climate targets and measures. It called for clarity on how decisions would be made and remarked on this process moving away from the Minister. The committee also said that there needed to be a definition of how consumption emissions were to be balanced to ensure that these would be offset by an associated reduction in the intake of gas through other mechanisms.There were concerns expressed in really clear language from the committee about the development or operation by a commercial operator and the need for it be explicitly limited to public bodies. The committee did not just say it should be State-led, but State-owned and operated with particular measures to ensure it would not be used as a precedent or as the opening of the door to commercial operators. The Government has disregarded all of these recommendations. The committee looked for safeguards including ensuring it remains in State ownership and operation and is only used for emergency supply. None of these measures from our detailed scrutiny are properly reflected in the Bill before us.

Experts pointed consistently to glaring holes in the Government's plan to bring LNG to Ireland. They pointed out the energy security and supply arguments do not stand up to scrutiny. They do not show us, for example, that it was necessary for our energy supply. CSO figures released today show data centres accounting for 23% of metered Irish electricity consumption, which is up 3% on just two years ago. Use by data centres has gone up by 10% while all other industrial and household users have risen by only 2%. The Government has made it clear its plan is to encourage new data centres and new demand. If there really was a concern about security we would be looking for plans to, as was said, really intensify renewable energy and genuinely deliver on that and on storage rather than a measure that has so many negative side effects.

I will address a couple of these effects in the context of security. On the economic side, the reliance on gas as a price setter has been shown to drive up bills in Ireland consistently. We have seen how the reliance on gas contributes to the escalation of energy bills and how gas is allowed set the price. The economic case for the terminal put forward by the Government was based on a low point in the highly fluctuating costs of LNG. Interestingly, there was no comparison in this cost-benefit analysis between the terminal a combination of renewables and batteries. It was decided to compare the costs solely with batteries or solely to renewables when clearly, the real alternative is a combination of renewables and batteries. That was not stacked against LNG in the cost analysis.

The thing about the fluctuating price of LNG is that it is not a moment in time. We are going to be exposed to them constantly because LNG burns off. It is not a reserve. The Government is signing us up to the continued and sustained use of liquified natural gas, including fracked gas, because at least six times a year the reserve will need to be released into the system and replenished. That is the science of what is happening. As for the idea this is going to be a six-month reserve, it will never be more than a two-month reserve because every two months it will need to be renewed. If we were to be in a situation of conflict it would become a target and the supply of LNG itself would become an area of vulnerability.

We want to put almost €1 billion into this, a cost that will be carried by the public, although it does not stack up from an energy security or economic perspective. Crucially, not only does it not stack up but it is an act of recklessness in respect of our climate targets. It does not stack up in climate terms to such an extent that the Government is having to disapply the climate Act because it knows no credible consideration of the climate Act would back this.The Climate Change Advisory Council has explicitly spoken about how the further expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure through an LNG terminal will commit Ireland to further fossil fuel lock-in, with serious concerns over the total emissions, including the upstream release of methane where LNG is sourced via fracking. A large amount of this LNG comes from fracking; a process that we outlawed in our own country because of its damaging impact. Moreover, much of that fracked gas is coming from the United States, which has left the Paris Agreement.

The level of damage that is being done to other communities and collectively, globally, is not even being measured. What we do know, however, is that methane is an accelerant. We know that the LNG gas that is added to the system is actually a higher emitter and has a higher emission content than other gas that is currently in the system. This was emphasised in terms of the upstream impact in the 2026 electricity report from the Climate Change Advisory Council. Further investment in construction of fossil fuel infrastructure is going to destroy our ability to meet our targets and is an act of absolutely reckless abuse towards the rest of the world and those who are doing the work of trying to transition us to a liveable future. This is a security risk in the deepest sense because climate change is the greatest security risk we have. This is an accelerant on that risk and the damage will not only be felt by the population here in Ireland but by others right across the world. Again, this is a mistake and among a number of very poor decisions from the Government, this will go down as one of the historic mistakes.

Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)
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I join with my colleagues in our outright condemnation of this approach by the Government in relation to this legislation. The Government is going to be the lead negotiator on behalf of the European Union at both the climate Conference of the Parties, COP, and the biodiversity COP later this year. We have zero credibility in asking other member states to step up or in trying to show leadership from a European perspective when we are disapplying our climate Act every time we want to, be it the Critical Infrastructure Act the airport cap Bill or this legislation. What credibility have we got? We have none. We do not have any. We are stepping into the Presidency of European Union with no credibility whatsoever.

As has been said by my colleague, our climate committee first of all was denied the opportunity to take pre-legislative scrutiny. It was then crammed into a two-week session. Our report was subsequently ignored anyway and none of the recommendations from it were taken on board. If an emergency reserve is actually needed, and that is a really big "If", one of our recommendations was for an updated energy security review which, again, was not followed up on. If we look at how soon this can be ready and how quickly we can electrify our energy system and support interconnection and storage, then it is of critical importance that the reserve is contained strictly within our frameworks for decarbonising our society. To do otherwise creates a situation where we develop a reserve that locks us into further possible fuel use dependence, as well as being past a sell-by date. The reality is quite stark. By allowing an LNG terminal to be exempt from binding commitments of the climate Act, the terminal will not have to comply with national mitigation plans, adaptation frameworks, transition objectives or greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. Without the right guardrails in place in this legislation, we are putting ourselves at risk of creating significant fossil fuel lock-in within our energy system, doubling down on high energy costs for families and homes. Again, this was reiterated at our climate committee. If we are to have a gas reserve, it should entail as small as possible an amount for the shortest possible amount of time, with a clear exit strategy, all underpinned by the mechanisms of the climate Act. That is what it is there for. This Bill does none of that. Instead, it leaves LNG as an open-ended question at a time when we know just how unreliable global supplies of fossil fuels can be. We have heard this from Friends of the Earth. We heard it from Trócaire, which is calling on the Government to have us carry our fair share of the burden.

On the issue around security of supply, LNG does not give us security of supply. Our energy supply for this reserve would have to be imported from countries like Qatar and the United States.We have seen the volatility happening there. We have an opportunity here to do something radically different but, unfortunately, the Minister of State has not taken that opportunity.

An Coimisiún Pleanála announced yesterday that it is going to delay the decision on the Shannon pipeline until 2 July next year. There is a five-year timeline on this, and a €900 million cost of construction for the project. There is no doubt that is going to escalate and it will happen with the Shannon pipeline as well. For what? To lock us into fossil fuel infrastructure for data centres into the future, missing our climate targets and denying an opportunity for Ireland to show leadership at a time when it is critical to do so.

This is a disgraceful piece of legislation and we will not be supporting it.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank all the Senators for their contributions today. Certainly, as has been noted throughout the debate, especially on the Government side of the House, there is an urgent requirement to take action to mitigate this critical risk to Ireland's energy security. As I said earlier, the main purpose of this Bill is to provide for a project-specific bespoke consenting pathway for the strategic gas emergency reserve facility that will be located in County Clare. This will enable the development consent application to be submitted later this year, which is critical in achieving an accelerated delivery of this project.

As referenced by Senators Duffy and Clifford-Lee, we are a small island nation that is very reliant on interconnectors. Our exposure to potential disruption of gas supply presents a really significant risk to energy security. I was shocked it was not referenced by anyone on the Opposition benches that the real purpose of this Bill is to ensure we have sufficient supply to protect households and business consumers in the event of major disruption of our subsea pipelines, which account for over 80% of all gas supply into this country. It is very important we have continuity of supply for businesses and householders across the country. This strategic gas reserve will provide the alternative source of gas at an appropriate scale. If Ireland were to experience such devastating interruptions, I am sure the Senators would be coming into this House calling foul that Government had done nothing. This Bill is very much focused on delivering an emergency reserve. It is critical for Ireland's energy security.

The strategic gas energy reserve is a priority project of a real and strategic nature that is required to mitigate any major consequences. I am confident the legislation before the House today will provide the robust consenting process that will enable the project to proceed at an expedited pace. For far too long, we have been held back in major developments across major projects. We have done major reforms through the planning and development Bill and with An Coimisiún Pleanála. We now need to move forward with the Critical Infrastructure Act to enable Ireland to deliver critical projects of real strategic importance, and this is one of them.

I acknowledge and appreciate the significant work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate, Energy and the Environment, which conducted pre-legislative scrutiny on the general scheme of the Bill. I also thank the Attorney General's office and all the officials and stakeholders, as well as all the Senators for their contributions today. We look forward to discussing the Bill further on Committee Stage.

Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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I welcome to the Gallery a very special guest, Conor Kenny. He is here as a guest of Deputy Paul McAuliffe. I hope he enjoys his visit to Leinster House today.

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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Next Tuesday.

Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.