Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-16 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I am a member of the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy which examined this issue in some detail. As the Minister of State will be aware, I looked at this issue for a number of years prior to that, and he and I engaged on it when he was a Member of this House. Interestingly, when the committee examined this issue the evidence and case for this terminal were not strong, and the warnings and dangers about its impact, environmentally, socially, in terms of security and financially, were really severe and serious. The case that was being made was limited. The committee produced a cross-party report, which, in its opener, states that there is only one very narrow kind of scenario in which such a terminal might be an appropriate solution and other appropriate solutions might be possible instead. In terms of the wider emergency pressures, the wider crisis we are facing and the wider issues of security and energy security, LNG does not deliver what we need in terms of energy security. It does not deal with the crisis we are having in terms of energy security. That is dealt with by renewables. It does not deal with the climate crisis and the emergencies that have been created. In fact, it intensifies the crisis and the problems we are facing in terms of climate change and related emergencies. It does not help us in those scenarios. It helps only in this very narrow scenario, which is in the case of an interconnector cable being broken. That is it. We are spending €1 billion on this one hypothetical scenario when we have real scenarios such as the climate crisis that is accelerating and which we can physically feel, yet we are not he putting the same equivalent resources into tackling those issues of energy security. I know some things are being done on renewables and batteries but, again, there is a big question of what €1 billion adds further to what we are doing and what that would look like. There were a lot of concerns about balancing out and whether this was the right decision to make, some of which I will come to in later amendments. There was a cost-benefit scenario which only looked at whether a terminal is a better cost when compared with wind or battery, not compared with wind and battery. That is ludicrous because we know that renewable energy and battery storage are needed. That is the combination we would be using and seeking to intensify and deliver in an emergency scenario. That is where the investment can deliver more, not just for that specific scenario but for the wider range of energy security scenarios we have. In the time between the committee initially scrutinising this issue and raising a lot of serious concerns and the Bill coming before us, the volatility and insecurity associated with gas, particularly this kind of LNG, have only intensified. We have seen it in relation to what has happened in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. It is clearly not a safety net; it is a vulnerability. On the emergency scenario, while giving credit to an emergency, if one were to arise, it is still not a great solution because it does not give us six months' supply. We were told we needed to do this because of the N-1 standard. What was unequivocally dealt with in the committee's hearing, and it is in the committee's report, is that the N-1 standard - can demand be met on an individual day? - can be met by demand-management measures, on the day. We can meet the European standard using demand-management measures. The committee was very clear on that. It is not the European N-1 standard making us do that. That angle was put to bed. What we were left with was this one hypothetical scenario of a damaged interconnector, and the idea that we might need six months of supply. The problem with that is an LNG terminal does not deliver six months of supply because the gas has to be vented and replaced every two months. Even if we had an LNG terminal, at an absolute maximum, if an event were to happen on the day after a new supply came in, there would be two months' supply available. Otherwise, you are talking about ships bringing fuel in to replenish the reserve rather than ships being brought in with fuel for an emergency. I just want to be clear that doing this is not even great in an emergency scenario. Here is the problem. When we were talking about this at a meeting of the committee, only one emergency scenario was identified in which this could actually be relevant. "Emergency" in the Bill could mean anything. There is no definition. We do not know what is meant by "emergency". Are we going to say that, because one hypothetical scenario we used to justify the €1 billion expenditure is not occurring, we should use the reserve for other emergencies, such as a bad day or a day when all of the gazillion large energy users we have added to the grid want to keep going and we also have a heatwave or cold day? What is going to count as an emergency? I am worried that the scenario in which the provision is actually relevant is so narrow. The gas would literally be vented into the air. We would not and should not be using it in the system, but it would add to our emissions every two months. I worry that a narrative will emerge that we should use it for some other emergencies. Amendment No. 1 makes it very clear that what is proposed should be the last resort. It should happen only after all relevant market-based measures have been implemented. Those market measures should include the demand-reduction strategies that are eligible under N-1, including demand reduction by large energy users, and should have been implemented, exhausted and proven insufficient. We are in a situation where only non-market-based measures can be introduced to safeguard gas supplies. This does not include localised constraints or routine seasonal increases in demand where physical supply remains available. That is amendment No. 1. Amendments Nos. 4, 2 and 8 are Sinn Féin amendments and I will leave it to its members to speak to the specifics. They tackle the same core issue. The key question is that of what is going to constitute an emergency, and the slippage in what is used in defining an emergency. Am I right that amendment No. 15 is in this grouping? I probably would not have put it in this grouping. --- 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/2026-07-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-16