Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank everybody for raising a range of issues. Deputy Malcolm Byrne was first off in raising Storm Chandra. He made the very good point that there are about eight storm events a year now and that speaks to the need for greater adaptation in our broader policies across the board. We need to adapt and invest in adaptation so that we are ready for these storms. Each storm is different. Storm Éowyn was different from Storm Chandra and had different impacts. I have spoken to the Minister with responsibility for roads and also to the Minister for public expenditure in relation to that. Submissions have been made across the country in respect of Storm Chandra and the needs there. I will come back to the Deputy in respect of that because it has to happen. More broadly, when I visited the Deputy, we saw a different manifestation of the storm. The flooding during that particular storm was a different event from what I witnessed in Carlow and in different parts of the country that I visited.
I would be strongly supportive of what Deputy McCormack said. Offaly has been very progressive in terms of renewables in general. As I have said to him previously, Offaly is on the cusp of something significant. Given the work of Bord na Móna, the battery storage developments that we have witnessed in Shannonbridge recently, investment in renewable farms and other investors coming on stream, renewable energy will attract other investments. Offaly has to get acknowledgement for what it has achieved already. It does not make any sense if there is not recognition. What has happened so far needs to be measured in terms of what one plans for the next instalment or degree of provision.
As I said earlier in response to another question, we need to have an honest conversation in the House about energy. People have looked for supports, quite rightly, and we have allocated about €750 million to alleviate the pressures on families, but the most effective pathway is to have more renewables. That will reduce the costs but we need to communicate that better to the public. More wind and more solar means cheaper energy costs in the long term and then we will not have to be putting together €750 million packages or providing energy credits for ever more. There is an over-reliance on the gas side and all of that is imported. If one looks at all of the graphs, we are still not at the right level. Around 40% of our energy is from renewables, or rather, around 40% of our electricity generation is from renewables. There has been an onshore wind revolution over the last 30 years. It has caused pressures and challenges, of that there is no doubt, but, equally, fossil fuel is damaging as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-19