Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel 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. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-07