Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-04
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I had them around the table. The Secretary General of my Department chairs it. I attend it and I chair for the hour and go through it. We have brought in industry and every single Government Department. We have talked to all the various agencies involved as well to look at any generic obstacles that we can remove, or any barriers to accelerate offshore wind. We have carried out an onshore wind revolution in this country over many decades now. Every party that was in government over the last 30 years, and the county councils, have facilitated that. The Deputy should acknowledge that. We have not shifted our focus. I want to get it done as quickly as we possibly can. It is absolutely essential. It is wrong of the Deputy to say that somehow we have moved to LNG as opposed to offshore wind. The evidence does not suggest that. Why did we move to create an LNG strategic reserve? The Deputy should know this too. It is for security. The papers and the files in the Department are very clear. The advices are very clear. Deputy O'Gorman talked about security of supply. Because of security vulnerabilities, if anything happened to our gas interconnectors our economy would be stalled after ten days. That is the advice. We need a security backup. A State-owned strategic reserve facility is being established to give us that backup in the event of malicious or malign forces undermining the gas interconnectors. That is not fanciful. We just have to look at what happened in the Baltic Sea with interference and interventions with various pieces of infrastructure. We know our subsea cables have been monitored. We know the gas connectors were monitored. The Irish Naval Service and UK divers had to inspect them, after a particular ship of the shadow fleet lingered over those gas pipelines, to make sure nothing untoward had happened. That is the reality. The Deputy should not paint that as some sort of shift away from our climate and our commitment to offshore wind. I think that is very unfair.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04