Budget 2026 (Enterprise, Tourism and Employment): Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath

I thank the Senator for that intervention. We are price-takers in the market. That is a big issue in power. We have set up the national affordability task force and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is trying to ensure that as we invest in our grid, we make the user pay less.
In the new capital programme, PR6, we are investing about €18 billion in improving our transmission and grid capacity. In PR5, we invested about €8 billion, so it is a significant increase in expenditure. The framework is the key thing that Government will have to grasp. This capital expenditure will transform our generation capacity. We will have 9 GW of solar come into the grid by 2030, 8 GW of onshore wind and, in theory, 5 GW post 2030 of offshore wind. How do we make that investment cheaper to the user? We know we are the most expensive economy for electricity in Europe because we are price-takers. We have two interconnectors waiting to come on stream, one with the UK and one off the coast of Cork with Brittany. They will make a difference.
As we go through the national affordability task force, we have to grasp the nettle. As the Government puts billions of euro into energy, we cannot levy it back on the user. That is the current framework and that is the change that needs to happen.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14