Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-16 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland The Government wants permission to build it and to suspend the climate Act so it does not apply and get it built. This is important because it should be borne in mind that building this terminal is not just about this terminal, as it will also open the door to commercial, which I will come to in a moment. It is reversing years of Government policy whereby we had the fossil fuel divestment Bill and the ban on fracking, because this will include fracked gas. There was also, of course, the policy prohibiting LNG which we had. It was not law and should have been law. The then Minister, Eamon Ryan, should have made it to law and it was wrong that it was only policy. We are reversing all of these policies that have helped to keep commercial LNG at bay. We put measures into our planning and development Acts that allow for a fast-track planning process not just for this LNG structure but any LNG structure. It is a fast-track planning process so it goes straight to An Coimisiún Pleanála. A lot is being asked and saying we will discuss what happens with it later is not really on. If the Minister of State is asking for so much to be set aside, and so many new risks to be taken on, he cannot say we will decide how we do it later. A recommendation of the committee and of many of the experts we heard from is that there should be a single Bill rather than seeking permission to build it and then talking about what we do with it. This is not good practice. The Minister of State cannot say we do not want to discuss whether there will be an emergency. Sure there is detail in it but the key issue is that what he is asking of the Oireachtas, which is to agree to it being built, is on the argument of there being an emergency. It should be very clear what the emergency is. I mentioned previously that the committee said our N-1 obligations could be met through demand management. It agreed there was one scenario, an incident relating to the interconnectors, but noted it would do little to insulate Ireland from more generalised risk to energy security and, in fact, what the Government should be doing is accelerating onshore, decarbonisation and secondary fuels and fast tracking other interconnectors and all of the rest that the Minister of State has described. The problem is that a lot of our renewable energy is being immediately absorbed by the increase in usage. Nonetheless, I have some practical questions. We need a little more on what the emergency is because it is not sufficient to say we will deal with it then. The emergency is the ground on which the Minister of State is asking for the normal planning process and the climate Act to be suspended. We need to know what the emergency is. If it is the case that there is an exit plan by 2040, it should answer the amendment tabled by Sinn Féin. The groupings are a little bit strange because I have also tabled a sunset clause amendment, which will be dealt with later and has not been grouped with Sinn Féin's sunset clause amendment. If this is about a transition and getting the house in order, there should be a sunset clause. We need a sunset clause. If it is going to be temporary, then temporary needs to be quantified in the Bill. Amendment No. 15 is also grouped with this amendment and this is a core issue in respect of ownership and operation. In the amendment, Senators Harmon, Cosgrove and Noonan and I are asking that the designated strategic gas reserve would remain exclusively in public ownership and under State control and would not be transferred or outsourced in whole or in part to any private commercial entity. That is vital. It is part of the core rationale as to why all of this special waiving and fast-tracking is being requested and the reversal of so much previous Government policy. I remember a moment, and I am sure the Minister of State does, when Ireland was going around the world selling green bonds on the back of our anti-fracking legislation and our fossil fuel divestment laws. We were selling bonds whereby Ireland was the future and getting into leading world anti-fossil fuel and climate change conferences yet we have this happening now. The committee is very clear on this. All provisions in the Bill that allow for development or operation by commercial entities must be explicitly limited to public bodies. The committee looked for this to be explicitly limited, both the development and operation, to the public bodies. That was a very clear message from the committee. Our amendment does the same thing. It says that it cannot be transferred to private commercial entities; it must be a designated public body; the Minister would not direct, permit or authorise any send-out of the gas unless the CRU has formally certified that a gas supply emergency exists that cannot be resolved by any other balancing; and all large energy users operating within the State have been curtailed. This is another one. I see now why it is grouped. It is because part of it is on the public ownership and the other part is that there is curtailment, if necessary, of large energy users in terms of minimum operation of electricity and natural gas consensual process. The Minister of State might touch on that. Will he talk to the emergency? What comes first in terms of demand reduction? That is not operational. That is policy. What are the policy measures that are going to be activated in terms of demand reduction and other measures before this last tier gets used? What measures are there in terms of ensuring that this is only under public ownership and only under public operation, as the committee has called for? --- 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