Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-03-24 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central We do have an energy plan. At the European Council meeting last week, there was a very interesting presentation by President von der Leyen, which went back from the late 1970s through every decade to the present day. The one constant was that every energy crisis was a fossil fuel crisis generated through war and conflict with the most recent being the Russian invasion of Ukraine before this war. The Deputy attacked the wind and solar energy agenda and so on. He is actually creating a scenario where there would be more energy dependence into the future and an energy dependence on fossil fuels, which would be a disaster for the country. If this teaches us anything, it is the necessity to double down on our focus and investment in renewables. There are hard choices to make on this. I was in the Dáil recently when a Deputy, in one contribution, complained about a gas generation station, a wind farm and a solar farm in one location. I asked the question: “How are we going to turn on the lights?” We do need a societal discussion about this because the bottom line is we are importing a lot of fossil fuel, which is subject to volatility in the markets and to various crises that can occur. The Barryroe oil field has been a long time - long before 2022 - handled by, or dealt with, within the private sector. It never really bore fruit, even prior to any decisions that we took both as a Government or as an Oireachtas in terms of any new fossil fuel developments. The recent 2025 energy in Ireland report showed that about 41.3% of our electricity demand in 2024 was being generated by renewable sources. That is very good progress. We have made a lot of progress in the past decade or so and beyond. We have a target of 80% of electricity demand to be made by renewables in the near term and to go to net zero out to 2050. We are a renewable success story. That is the trajectory of travel. We receive more of our electricity from onshore wind farms than anyone else in Europe. We are among one of the global leaders in integrating variable renewables onto the electricity grid. That is something that runs contrary to the narrative that the Deputy was representing. Regarding the carbon tax, €175 million of that went to farmers through ACRES. In 2026, €173 million is going to the Department of agriculture for farmers. We have 55,000 farmers in ACRES. That improves best outcomes on climate, air and water quality, biodiversity, green agricultural pilots and so on. Deputy Collins would be the very first Deputy coming in if any farmer in west Cork had reduced funding as a result of the carbon tax being removed and he would be singing a different tune if that turned out to be the case. --- 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/dail/2026-03-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-24