Legislative Measures
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

The reality is that we are building more interconnections. We are building the Celtic interconnector now. I signed a further memorandum of understanding, MOU, with Spain in relation to exploring opportunities to have another electricity interconnector to continental Europe.
In the meantime, we are accelerating the deployment of renewables. I agree with the former Minister, Eamon Ryan, and that is what we are doing. In relation to storage, in our grid alone, we have over 1 GW of long-duration battery storage. This is the third highest capacity in the European Union. We do, however, need to do more. This will deal with demand flexibility and reducing dispatch down rates and allow us to be able to deploy our energy, and particularly renewable energy sources, at times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. It will be possible to store that energy and then deploy it. This facility will be used temporarily. It is to mitigate risk should something happen to our gas pipelines to Scotland. We only produce 20% of the gas that we use now and import 80%.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-11