Energy Security: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-29
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Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. Energy security is something we heard all the previous speakers talk about. We generated 33% of our electricity demand last year from wind energy, which is welcome. It shows that some of these schemes are working at the moment. We are familiar with travelling around the country and seeing a lot of windfarms with propellers not moving at any given time. The reason for that is the lack of capacity in our grid. This country spent a lot of money in the 1970s and 1980s investing in our grid. We had a very good grid infrastructure in the 1990s for the development of our country. However, the grid infrastructure is creaking at the moment. It was suggested earlier that approximately 13% to 15% of our electricity capacity is being lost annually through lack of capacity to take from wind energy at the moment. I welcome that the Minister said he has provided €3.5 billion in equity for offshore and onshore grid capacity. That is the priority. It is not going to be possible to do a whole lot with all these other schemes unless we fast track the grid capacity and that investment.
I welcome the Tonn Nua campaign down in the south-east. There is 900 MW of capacity going to be generated offshore there. There are four other sites off the south-east coast that will be contracted out at a later stage. If we are hell-bent on offshore and generating our offshore capacity, the only port in Ireland at the moment capable of dealing with that is Belfast. In the next couple of months, Cork Port will introduce additional infrastructure and capacity but it will only be able to deal with one project at a time. The ports cannot invest in any of the offshore projects or in their own expansion until planning is approved. I would love to hear the Minister of State's thoughts on the offshore and ports investment.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-29