I regularly meet with Eir, NBI, the contractors who do the work and everybody in between to make sure that the project is still running. I have met with the new chief executive of Eir and I am convinced that he will continue to improve the roll-out of this system. Deputy Ó Murchú mentioned Eir make-ready which is the preparatory work that Eir does in the year before it hands over the poles and ducts to NBI for its design work. At this stage, the bottleneck is not with NBI anymore, but with Eir. The availability of …

I will start with Deputy Ó Murchú. By the end of this year, we will have agreed with NBI what its target is for next year. Some 102,000 is our target for January of next year and we will have agreed a new achievable target by the end of the year. That will involve working with Eir on their make-ready plans. The existing contract is for a seven-year roll-out which completes by 2026. If we can do it faster, we will. Our focus in the past year has been on getting it back on track. We are now delivering the right numbe…

With regard to the people who have 30 Mbps and are regarded to be good enough, the national target has not been agreed, but it is likely that everybody will have gigabit Internet by the end of 2028.

I understand.

At present, the quantity of recyclable materials placed on the market by industry in Ireland is in excess of domestic recycling capacity and the waste management industry relies, in part, on the export market to meet its processing needs. As Minister of State, I do not have the power in an open market to direct waste to be kept within Ireland or that it be directed to a specific facility for recycling. That being said, Repak, the national packaging extended producer responsibility scheme, is incentivising domestic …

Indeed, at the invitation of Deputy Niamh Smyth I went up and had a look at Shabra plastics in Monaghan, one of many visits I have made to Monaghan. I could see it is importing plastic from all around the world and meanwhile Irish plastic is being exported all around the world in contravention of the proximity principle. The question is how do we address this. We are not waiting for European agreement on a common virgin plastic tax. There are countries that brought one in. My Department is examining what form that …

The unrecycled plastic tax on packaging waste is calculated by finding the quantity of plastic packaging put on the market and then subtracting the quantity that was recycled. I will get the Deputy an answer for who the authorities are who calculate those statistics. If it is not my Department it is probably the Environmental Protection Agency, the Central Statistics Office or somebody. On the question of a virgin plastic tax, we are looking into that. We do not have to wait for EU approval. What is being imported …

I thank Senator Carrigy for raising this matter, which is very timely. The management of the ESB-owned facilities is an operational matter for the board and management of the ESB. The ESB ceased electricity generation at Shannonbridge and Lanesborough power stations in December 2020 because their planning permission had expired. The just transition commissioner made a recommendation in his first progress report published in May 2020 that a study be undertaken regarding the future potential at both ESB power station…

I should clarify that the phrase "anticipated shortfall" refers to an anticipated shortfall in the buffer of the surplus energy we have, on top of what is needed to power the country. I do not expect there will be power cuts this winter or next winter, although it is always possible. It is always possible every year. There is always a possibility of power cuts happening and it is the job of the CRU and EirGrid together to work out how to minimise that possibility. It is for that reason we passed emergency legislati…

Absolutely, yes.

I thank the Regional Group for raising this important motion. We are all too aware of the pressing matters of energy security, energy prices and protecting our vulnerable consumers and businesses. At the outset, I would like to emphasise the impact the war in Ukraine is having on gas market prices and, in turn, the impact on both gas and electricity bills over the coming winter and beyond. Europe has not faced an energy challenge like this since the 1970s oil crisis. The Minster, Deputy Ryan, attended a Council of …

EU Regulation No. 2022/1369 was adopted by the Council of the European Union on 5 August of this year with the aim of improving the co-ordination framework for national gas demand reduction measures in case of a severe disruption of gas supplies from Russia. As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war, there is a heightened risk of a complete cessation of supplies of natural gas from Russia to Europe. Gas supplies from Russia to Europe have been severely reduced over the past year and continu…

The Government has to lead by example on this and the public sector has been asked to turn down its thermostats to a maximum of 19°C and to turn off the power an hour or two before the end of the working day where that is feasible, reasonable and safe, which it would not be in a hospital, obviously. We have also asked that public sector buildings and bodies turn off display lighting at night, where it is not there for the purpose of safety. That should, of course, extend to the corporate sector. Just as the Governm…

I welcome the debate and I thank colleagues from all sides for their contributions. This is clearly the main item of interest and concern to Irish people, who are facing unprecedented wholesale gas prices, which directly impacts electricity and gas prices in our homes. We know that over the coming winter we will face higher energy costs, as continued price rises take effect. As I previously outlined, the Government has taken action in 2022 in response to rising energy prices and has put in place a €2.4 billion pack…

I thank Senator Kyne for his question. Ireland has one of the best offshore renewable energy resources in the world with a sea area of 490,000 sq. km, which is approximately seven times the size of our landmass. Because of Ireland's location at the Atlantic edge of the EU, we have more offshore energy potential than most other countries in Europe. The Climate Action Plan 2021 includes a suite of actions to realise the full potential of the totality of Ireland's offshore renewable energy resources and commits to the…

One of the main things is that our planning process at the moment is lengthy, as has been pointed out by the Senator. It needs to be compressed if we are going to meet our targets and if we are going to deal with the energy crisis that is happening across Europe. The EU has agreed under the REPowerEU proposals to compress the planning period down to a maximum of two years for major renewable projects and then to one year for particular go-to zones which each member state must designate as being areas where rapid de…

I intend to amend the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992 to allow the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to consider applications for integrated pollution control and industrial emissions licences that are subject to the provisions of section 181 of the Planning and Development Act 2000. I addressed this issue by introducing amendment No. 33 on Committee Stage in the Seanad. Amendment No. 33, therefore, provides for the provision whereby the EPA can accept and process licence applications, in line with exi…

I thank the Deputies. I have been in Monaghan on a number of occasions in the past year. I met Deputy Carthy's brother in Carrickmacross. I asked my Department to engage directly with Shabra Plastics some time ago. They have been engaging and that will continue. In general, our facilities infrastructure for recycling plastics in Ireland is not well developed. One of the consequences of this Bill is that there will be a greater supply of segregated material as a result of directing better streams and better segregat…

It has been very hard to tackle those problems for local authorities because they have been prevented from gathering evidence by legal constraints due to privacy concerns and the general data protection regulation, GDPR. They have found it difficult to get the evidence that is required in order to bring a case against the people who are carrying out that crime, which affects us all. We have had to balance in those provisions the right to privacy, on one hand, and the right to live in a clean environment on the othe…

I am happy to go into that. If there is a situation whereby there is a virgin plastic tax in a nearby jurisdiction, that creates an incentive to export goods from Ireland to be processed in that jurisdiction. There is a mismatch in that regard. It makes it harder if that country is no longer a member of the EU and is not subject to the same rules. We must decide if we are going to impose a plastic tax in Ireland at the same rate and consider whether that is the right thing to do. At the same time, we must consider …