I am very conscious of the positive impact that small-scale inshore fishers have on their coastal communities. It is about maintaining, protecting and preserving that from a cultural and historical perspective. I know they are not looking for money. They just want to survive and they would much prefer to do that through fishing and the processing of fish. I am prepared to work with them, and I am conscious of the document. In the context of the work that Michael Berkery is doing and the report from Kieran Mulvey th…

I thank Senator Scahill for raising what I believe it is a very important issue. As he has rightly identified, the solar PV for the medically vulnerable scheme is a targeted scheme for the installation, as he has identified, of solar photovoltaic panels for household customers who have registered on the life support category of the priority services register. These are homes that have a dependence on electrically powered equipment, including medical equipment, life-protecting devices and assistive technology. Examp…

Certainly, the Department could take that up with the SEAI to make sure there is a greater level of connection or communication between those potential beneficiaries. I think the Senator asked how many were on the register. My understanding is that there are about 18,000 in total. The 1,900 figure would represent about 10% of that, if my sums are close, so we still have a bit to go. Not everybody will want solar and not everybody will see it as beneficial, but the Senator has identified a need and has clearly ident…

I welcome the opportunity to talk to Senators today about this really important issue. As Senators know, the Government recognises the exceptional pressure that rising fuel costs are placing on our farmers, contractors, and fishermen and fisherwomen around the coastline. I have heard it from fishermen and fisherwomen from all coastal areas of the country and in my ongoing engagements with all our seafood representative bodies in recent weeks. I have done my best to get around to as many of the areas as I can and me…

I have spent a lot of time here over the years.

I will try to go through some of the issues that were raised. Senator O'Donovan welcomed the fuel subsidies and recognised that this had a particular impact on certain sectors. Obviously, a lot of the pelagic vessels carried out their fishing effort in January and February, with some in March. The scheme seeks to pick the point at which prices started to escalate, which is March to July. I will come back to Senator Wilson in that regard. The polyvalent and the whitefish sectors seem to have been most impacted as we…

I thank all the Senators who contributed to this important debate. It is particularly timely because of the context in which we find this discussion. I have noticed a better understanding by our citizens when we talk about decarbonisation. For far too long, the conversation was just about the impact on the environment. It was not looked at more broadly in terms of the position that virtually all Senators reflected on, which is that this is about energy security and that we are not in control of our own at a time wh…

Every second night - it is more like twice a night.

It is not opposed.

It is not opposed.

I thank the Deputy for the question. I understand she wants clarification specifically on the review of the pass-through from wholesale electricity prices to retail electricity prices that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, requested the CRU to undertake. As the Deputy knows, retail electricity prices are influenced by several factors, including wholesale energy prices, system operation costs and supplier hedging. The latest data from Eurostat shows that, in nominal terms, Ireland ranked fifth for household electricity …

The Minister and the officials in the Department have been engaging with the CRU to emphasise the importance of this. We all know the impacts that people are feeling. We know that the cost-of-living crisis is a result of significant increases in inflation in recent times. Of course, we all desire to try to resolve this. As the Deputy knows, the Minister commissioned a report on the national energy affordability task force. The first phase of that work came through prior to the budget last year. That is ongoing work…

The Deputy is aware that the CRU is independent entity. It is answerable to the Oireachtas through the Oireachtas committee, so there is an opportunity there for the Deputy. In fairness to her, Deputy Whitmore is a very vocal and hard-working member of that committee. The Minister has written to the CRU, and the officials are in contact. We want to bring this to a conclusion, but we must also recognise the independence of the CRU. As already stated, the commission is answerable to the Oireachtas. Price setting by e…

I know of the Deputy's interest in this area as he and I have discussed this on a number of occasions. Currently, the Department has no plans for the development of nuclear power, including small modular reactors, as part of Ireland's electricity system. As the Deputy is aware, there are two specific legislative prohibitions on nuclear power in place in Ireland. Both the electricity legislation, in section 18(6) of the Electricity Regulation Act 1999, and the planning legislation, in section 182 of the Planning and…

Nobody wants to rule out the discussion but from a Government perspective, for us right now, it is about action and about meeting our targets on the demand for energy. Our efforts are concentrated on capturing wind to bring the electrons ashore. Of course, we take electricity from France that has its source in nuclear energy. Nobody has a problem with that. The French have a lot of expertise in that area. I think we are better concentrating on an area where we have an abundance of electricity off our shoreline. We …

Absolutely. While the debate and discussion are somewhat academic at the moment, it is appropriate that we are looking that far ahead because we do not want to find ourselves in the situation that we currently do - reaching a point where there are constraints on our grid. The lesson we have learned from that is that we now have to get the generation piece right. I really believe in what we are doing on the renewables side, in solar, wind and offshore wind. There are opportunities for floating offshore wind as we mo…

I thank the Deputy. His sense of humour, as always, is timely and appreciated.

We can all be renewed. The two questions were separate but we have the opportunity to follow one with the other. It is very clear that other countries have a considerable advancement in relation to the use of nuclear energy as a method of driving their economic activity and producing electricity. They have been doing it for decades and have made certain advances in that area. We have not been in that race due to decisions that went back to the early 1970s on Carnsore and other matters. It has been very clear that n…

I agree. From a departmental perspective, we are not losing focus. We are absolutely targeting this. We are looking at interconnection as well. As the Deputy knows - the North-South interconnector is kind of in his area as well - we will have the Celtic interconnector. We want to build a more complex grid right across the European Union, which will help to balance the load, the demand and the generation, and we can do that. However, there is nothing wrong with accepting an academic debate. I do not say that in a th…

I am in broad agreement with the Deputy, but I am a big supporter of data centres. They are like the advanced factories that were there in the seventies.