Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

I echo a lot of the points made already about the temporary nature of this and what we have been promised. I am looking at a briefing from the Department of energy on 4 February. We were given numerous briefings by the Department about this. The Minister tried to avoid pre-legislative scrutiny and our committee had to fight for it. We have a report with 43 recommendations, all of which seem to have been ignored in this Bill. This briefing, which was given to us by the Department as part of our pre-legislative scrutiny, talks about this being "a state-owned gas storage facility" that will be "an emergency reserve" and that it "is not intended for commercial use and will not act as a new entry point for gas into the system". It talks about the reserve only being used "in the event of a major disruption to sub-sea gas pipelines". I do not understand, given everything we were told beforehand, why none of this is in the Bill. What is the Minister afraid of? As Deputy Whitmore has said, it gives rise to a lack of trust for those of us who are trying in good faith to scrutinise this legislation and spending huge amounts of time at the committee and in here putting forward proposals if all of that is simply going to be ignored. If the Minister's belief is that this is to be used in emergency circumstances only, then why not say that explicitly in the Bill? Why not have a definition of what an "emergency" is, as the committee recommended?
Our fear is that this is just going to add to national gas demand. It is going to facilitate the importation or additional gas, not just gas to be used in emergency circumstances. That is why I am very supportive of this amendment and the other amendments on the emergency nature of this facility and the temporary nature of the reserve.
There is a lot of money being invested in this infrastructure. It was €1 billion last time and it will most likely be more at the next estimate. This is long-term fossil fuel infrastructure that is being built.
We want to believe that the Minister that this is only going to be used in emergency circumstances and is not going to be commercially driven but there is nothing in this Bill to give us any confidence in that. That is the problem. That is why we are proposing these amendments and I am supporting them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30