Apologies have been received from Deputy Ciarán Ahern and Seanadóir Mark Duffy.

Session 1 will be from 12.30 p.m. to 1.30 p.m. and is on rebalancing Ireland's energy policy. The committee has agreed to undertake this meeting to discuss the Irish Academy of Engineering's recent report entitled Rebalancing Ireland's Energy Policy.

The purpose of today's session is to engage with representatives from two organisations with an interest in this area. I welcome the following representatives to the meeting. From the Irish Academy of Engineering, IAE, I welcome Mr. Sean Finlay, president, and Mr. Eamonn O'Reilly, chairman of the energy and climate action committee at IAE. From Engineers Ireland, I welcome Mr. Damien Owens, director general, and Ms Siobhán McHugh, chair of Engineers Ireland's energy, environment and climate action division. They are all very welcome.

I remind all those in attendance to make sure their phones are either on silent or switched off.

In relation to privilege, witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make any charges against any person or entity by name or in any such way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

In terms of the format of the meeting, I will invite witnesses to make an opening statement of a maximum of five minutes. Once those statements have been delivered, I will call on members to put their questions in the order in which they have indicated to me. We operate a rota system, with every member getting an initial four minutes for engagement. It is important to note that four minutes is for both questions and answers and, therefore, it is essential for members to put their questions succinctly and witnesses to be succinct in their responses. Please note that the duration of this meeting is limited and, therefore, the times must be adhered to. I ask everybody to be focused in their contributions.

We will take the opening statements in the following order: first, the Irish Academy of Engineering and, second, Engineers Ireland. I invite Mr. Finlay to make his opening statement on behalf of the Irish Academy of Engineering.

Gabhaim buíochas eis an gcoiste as ucht an gcuireadh teacht anseo inniu. The Irish Academy of Engineering is dedicated to advancing the well-being of the island of Ireland by marshalling the experience and insight of eminent engineers to provide independent advice to policy makers. The IAE regularly publishes research and guidance on matters relating to engineering, technology and the development of Ireland. We are grateful for the invitation to present to the joint committee today.

We are unique in being an all-island academy with 20% of our fellows from Northern Ireland. Our fellows give their time pro bono to provide thought leadership in a time of great change. The academy is a member of the European Council of Academies of Science and Engineering. We operate a memorandum of understanding with the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK and with Engineers Ireland. The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Irish Academy of Engineering will cohost a conference in Belfast in November on the topic of infrastructure resilience. I have no doubt members of this committee may be interested in that. This will take place during Ireland’s Presidency of the EU. I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Eamonn O’Reilly, to present our opening statement regarding energy matters.

Ireland has no indigenous energy resources that can adequately and reliably meet the country’s needs. The great bulk of our energy is imported: 53% through ports in the form of oil; 24% in undersea gas pipelines from Britain; and 3% via undersea cables in the form of electricity. Only 8% of our energy comes from indigenous wind and solar, and there is no credible engineering path to meet the objective of net-zero energy by 2050.

In our view, the policy focus on net-zero has come at the expense of considerations of the price of energy and energy security. National energy policy is unbalanced in two important respects. First, Irish energy prices are uncompetitively high by comparison with other countries and, in a wealthy country of 1.8 million households, 190,000 are in arrears for over 90 days on their electricity bills and 150,000 on their gas bills. The promise of renewables leading to low energy prices has not been met. Second, Ireland’s energy security has diminished to a parlous extent. There are no stocks of natural gas under sovereign control and there is an over-dependence on gas supplies from Britain.

Following the oil shocks of the 1970s, the need for energy security was well recognised and, today, the National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, maintains a strategic oil reserve with an energy content of 21 TWh to meet 90 days of demand from transport and heating. A similar level of energy security for imported natural gas, 40 TWh, would require a storage capacity of 10 TWh, but the actual level is zero.

The Government’s national risk assessment of 2024 correctly identified that Ireland’s lack of storage capacity for natural gas is a strategic risk for the country. Compared with Greece and Denmark, Ireland should already have natural gas storage capacity of between 5 TWh to give 37 days of supply, and 26 TWh to give 181 days.

On the electricity side, EirGrid is required to operate the electricity system with 99.97% confidence that all demand can be met at all times. There is no conceivable version of the Irish electricity system in 2050 which does not require a large fleet of back-up generation plant to ensure that this standard can be maintained and, for the foreseeable future and likely beyond 2050, this will require fossil fuels, primarily natural gas but also oil.

The national hydrogen strategy envisages green hydrogen becoming an alternative to natural gas to fuel this essential back-up to renewables. However, there is so much uncertainty as to whether this can be achieved in the 24 years to 2050 - or ever - that it would be unsafe and imprudent for national energy policy to assume that the country can wait for a hydrogen solution and, in the meantime, depend on the objectively insufficient 1.2 TWh of energy security which the State-led LNG project in the Shannon Estuary would provide.

Unfortunately, the potential of renewables to meet Ireland’s electricity and wider energy requirement has been consistently exaggerated and misrepresented, and policy needs to be rebalanced to reflect reality. The Irish Academy of Engineering’s November 2025 report, Rebalancing Ireland’s Energy Policy, made 11 recommendations in three areas: energy prices, energy security and project delivery. On project delivery, we welcome the accelerating infrastructure task force report and action plan but caution that its recommendations, while necessary, are not sufficient to meet the challenges of the energy transition. Long-term master planning of critical infrastructure for transmission and generation capacity to back-up renewables is also needed and this will require unequivocal and explicit policy and political support for three things: the construction of hundreds of kilometres of new high voltage overhead transmission lines; a doubling in the capacity of conventional generation capacity, fuelled mainly by natural gas; and the maintenance of large stocks of natural gas in Ireland under sovereign control so that, in the worst circumstances, the country can have certainty that the electricity system is able to reliably meet demand for a reasonably long period measured in weeks.

I thank Mr. O'Reilly. I now call Engineers Ireland.

I thank the committee for inviting Engineers Ireland to participate in this crucial discussion on Ireland’s energy policy and the recently published report on this subject by the Irish Academy of Engineering. My name is Damien Owens. I am the director general of Engineers Ireland, and I am joined by Siobhán McHugh, chair of our energy, environment and climate action division.

As the committee may be aware, Engineers Ireland is the representative body for all engineers in Ireland, giving voice to more than 30,000 members of the Irish engineering profession. Engineers Ireland also holds statutory responsibility for the awarding of the title of chartered engineer, holders of which may perform certain reserved functions under law. Our membership is keenly interested in energy policy and infrastructure and, in this opening statement, I would like to raise three issues that are central to any discussion of energy policy in Ireland.

The first is security. Conflict in the Middle East and the resulting increases in fuel prices have once again laid bare Ireland’s vulnerabilities to external shocks in the energy sector. For example, the cost of 1,000 litres of home heating oil cost has jumped by about 80% from its price point a month ago. We often think of energy as synonymous with electricity but electricity only accounts for 23% of energy consumed in Ireland. In 2024, around two thirds of the energy we used here was gas and oil necessary to heat homes and businesses or run cars and goods vehicles. Additionally, 42% of electricity generated came gas. All of our oil, and around 80% of our gas, is imported.

Gas imports come through two pipelines from Scotland and damage to this infrastructure, intentional or otherwise, risks leaving the country incapable of functioning. Government strategy seeks to move to a more secure electricity-led system but at present this is far from a reality. Ireland is the only European country with no domestic gas storage, no long-term indigenous supplies and no alternative supply routes.

The planned floating storage and re-gassification unit would only provide coverage for around a week’s gas demand and emergency capacity and further provision to extend our LNG storage to provide for better resilience should also be examined.

On reducing emissions and costs, according to Eurostat figures for the first half of 2025, Ireland also possesses one of the highest electricity prices for household customers in the European Union. While Germany leads in this regard, if VAT, Government-related levies and taxes are excluded, Ireland would move to pole position. Eurostat also notes that non-household electricity prices in Ireland were highest in the EU at €0.27 per kWh in the first half of 2025. As any economist will tell you, cheap and reliable energy is an essential fuel for successful economic development. It is possible, however, to develop affordable electricity and maintain reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Finland had the lowest non-household electricity prices in the EU in the first half of 2025 - at 8 cent per kWh - followed by Sweden at 9 cent per kWh. In Finland in 2024, 81% of electricity was generated by a combination of nuclear, hydro and wind energy. In Sweden, in the same year, 91% was generated by the same three sources. In both cases, less than 5% of electricity was generated through the burning of fossil fuels.

In Ireland, only around 40% our electricity generation came through renewable sources, four fifths of which came from wind. It is important to recognise, however, that getting our renewable electricity generation to this point has been a strong achievement given the complexities of our system and our position as an island nation on the periphery of Europe. In Finland, roughly 50% of total final energy consumption came from renewables; in Sweden, it was 60%; and in Ireland, around 14%. Finland and Sweden are not operating in a far-flung future but like Ireland, are developed western European societies. Achieving affordable energy predominantly based on renewable sources is not a pipe dream but an achievable goal, albeit one that will require enormous political commitment and a cultural step change to realise. A challenge will be to fund necessary developments such as offshore renewables, a strengthened national grid and grid-level storage, which may increase bills to consumers.

Lastly, I draw attention to an often-overlooked part of the puzzle, namely, the people needed to deliver the energy future we hope to achieve. Engineers are in demand globally and Ireland has to compete for engineering talent. Recent research by Engineers Ireland has shown that more than 22,000 additional engineers will be required over the next decade to meet Ireland’s economic and infrastructural needs. A wide range of engineering roles fall within Ireland’s critical skills occupations list while a clear majority of engineering employers experience significant challenges in hiring engineers at all levels of their organisations. We produce around 40% fewer engineering graduates than the global median per capita and we lack sufficiently strong apprenticeship and vocational pathways to provide genuinely alternative routes into the profession. Additionally, the fifth year of accredited integrated master’s programmes in engineering are not publicly funded creating challenges for students acquiring qualifications that would assist them in becoming chartered engineers.

Ireland’s proposed energy future of an electricity-based system supplied by renewable sources would be a radical transition but radical outcomes require radical approaches and, frankly, radical investment to support their implementation. Providing for our energy security, developing the renewable electricity-based energy system we need to protect our climate and investing in the people to deliver it must become even more urgent priorities. Ireland can either accelerate in this regard or simply be left behind.

I thank the witnesses for their attendance today. Regarding the point in the Engineers Ireland statement about apprenticeships, this is an issue that has been raised consistently in this committee over the past number of months, particularly with regard to the deep dive around the energy sector. ESB Networks appeared before us a few weeks ago and has similar challenges. What could the Government do to enable those career pathways looking at the issue of public funding of the master's programme and apprenticeships in particular because it seems to be a significant logjam that is exacerbated by demands in other sectors where school leavers have so many options open to them?

A lot of good work has been done by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, particularly on construction apprenticeships. There needs to be greater awareness of the skills and careers that are available across the energy sector and apprenticeships in general. We need to increase the gender balance in that area. The first approach involves creating awareness. Engineers Ireland operates an outreach programme called STEPS, which goes into schools and illustrates what engineering careers are like. We need to increase activity in this area to make people aware of the careers and opportunities that are available.

We have to do a lot of education with parents. There is a negativity or an outdated perception associated with apprenticeships and we need to work on that. The apprenticeship schemes that have been brought in - the professional apprenticeships as we call them - where a person can get a degree and earn while he or she learns have proved to be very popular and are oversubscribed by both students and the industry partners that want to take on those apprenticeships. A lot more can be done there.

Funding is for the first four years of the integrated master's programme. In the fifth year, students have to work to pay for that. During the first four years, they pay the registration fee. In the fifth year, they have to pay the full master's fee, which can run to €9,000 or €10,000 aside from any accommodation or other costs.

That is a significant burden on families.

Issues around current plans by Government to develop an LNG terminal in the Shannon Estuary were raised in both statements. It was stated that even this would not give the State the capacity it needs in comparison to other countries. We dealt with the report on that. Are Engineers Ireland and the Irish Academy of Engineering satisfied that the legislation brought forward by the Government is robust enough to deliver a terminal in a timely manner given the urgency both organisations are proposing here?

While we are bringing in the LNG terminal, even that will not supply sufficient back-up capacity.

Our belief is that what is proposed by Government is too small. It is too small in terms of its capacity. If there is an acceptance by Government that we need to store gas, the quantity must be sufficient to meet the needs of the country in the same way that the National Oil Reserves Agency has 1.6 million tonnes of oil stored in various locations. Our view is that the State-led project at the moment is inappropriate. It is far too small. What we need is a project similar to the one that got planning permission in a record six months back in 2008, which had an energy storage capacity of 5 terawatt hours in the planning that was looked for. We need something of that scale but we probably need more storage. Work is being done at the moment by the likes of ESB and dCarbonX looking at the old Ballycotton gas field. That is important work. There could be a combination of LNG and geological storage of gas but LNG is essential because the national risk assessment identifies two problems. One is storage while the other is diversity of supply. For as long as we are going to depend on gas, we should have that diversity of supply. We need not get into recent events now.

I agree and the recent events have highlighted the vulnerability of storage and LNG supplies more generally globally. The estimated cost is put at €900 million. We spoke about these infrastructural projects being levied on household energy bills and it is proposed that this will be levied on household energy bills. That in itself creates a challenge. The fear has been expressed here about locking ourselves into a dependency on gas rather than moving towards rapid decarbonisation. Do the witnesses share those concerns or does the case being presented here involve having this as backup or becoming the default; using gas in the grid more generally?

No, certainly not looking not to proceed. We should be proceeding with renewables. We would question the quantum of renewables in policy at 54,000 MW. We think that is far too big but that is a minor point. We should definitely be using renewables to take greenhouse gas emissions out of our energy system.

That is what renewables do, and they do it really well. However, they cannot be depended on to give that 99.97% figure I quoted for EirGrid's mandate. We need something to back it up. We will always need that. Whether that is fuelled by a greenhouse gas-emitting source of fuel or a non-greenhouse gas-emitting source of fuel, we still need it. For the foreseeable future the only option we have is methane, either in the form of natural gas or biomethane, the development of which we would hugely support.

Last question, Senator.

Am I over time?

Yes, you are.

I apologise. A significant proportion of our energy use, as per the opening statements, is in the transport sector, both in freight and in private car use. Do the organisations have a view on rapidly rolling out cycling and walking infrastructure in our towns and cities? Quite a bit of work is being done in the big urban centres, but in the smaller urban centres right across the country a significant impact could be made. Do the organisations have a view on Connecting Ireland, the Local Link, the rural bus services and the deployment at scale of transport services that offer options for people living in rural Ireland, in particular, who are disproportionately affected by this energy crisis?

Absolutely. Rolling out active travel infrastructure and rural Local Link is key to reducing carbon journeys. Equally, if we look at long-distance travel, and trains in particular, we can see the popularity of the Belfast route, where they have introduced hourly transport and the take-up has been enormously successful. As we electrify more of the rail network, even with the metro a long way off, that will take a lot of carbon out of the transport system.

Going back to my previous life in Dublin Port, there has been the development of the cycleways such as the Tolka estuary greenway and currently there is a project going from the Liffey to the Tolka. There is a project with An Bord Pleanála that will put a huge number of cycleways and walkways on the Poolbeg peninsula. Absolutely, on a personal basis I completely support that. Likewise, the academy would definitely support the movement from fossil fuel-based transport to either electric or more active travel.

In relation to Senator Noonan's question about apprenticeships, Skillnet has a number of modular courses for renewable energy upskilling, and we fully support that. We hope that will help with the skills shortage my colleague Damien Owens has referred to.

I thank the representatives for their opening statements. I want to ask a couple of questions around the "Reducing Both Emissions and Costs " section of Engineers Ireland’s opening statement. Mr. Owens referenced the cost of electricity in Sweden and Finland, saying that 81% of electricity in Finland is generated by a combination of nuclear, hydro and wind energy and that Sweden is the same. He said only 5% of electricity is generated through the burning of fossil fuels. Would Mr. Owens accept that in order to move towards cheaper electricity bills, we need to move away in an accelerated way from fossil fuels? Is that what he is saying?

Yes.

In the following paragraph of his statement, Mr. Owens mentioned the complexities of our system. Will he expand on those complexities? Is he talking about delays in the planning process? Is he saying there was not enough investment in the grid, storage or renewables? One Minister recently said the Government was sitting on its hands and navel-gazing about offshore wind, and I would agree with that. Is that what Mr. Owens means? Should we be moving more towards the Scandinavian model?

I will address the first part of that. What we mean by complexity are the technical complexities on our electricity system, in that specific instance. As an island nation, we are alone in that we produce power here and it circulates within Ireland. Other countries and other regions in Europe are heavily interconnected. They are linked to their neighbours via power lines and transmission lines. They have an inherent resilience in that they are part of the bigger block. Some of what we were addressing in our opening statement were technical complexities because Ireland is an island and it is quite technically complex to integrate variable renewables. We have credited our colleagues within the power system for doing that at high levels, which is a very technically complex task they have succeeded in doing. Notwithstanding that, the accelerating infrastructure task force would also point out that building infrastructure is a complex issue in Ireland as well, and there are many recommendations in that which are high priority and would be very beneficial in delivering-----

Is Engineers Ireland satisfied with the pace of improving the grid, improving storage and the offshore wind auctions?

Huge strides are being made if we look at the frequency with which all of those things are happening, and particularly how any challenges have been called out very well in that very comprehensive report in terms of accelerating infrastructure.

Is Ms McHugh saying she is happy with the pace of the move to renewables over the last ten years?

Ireland, taking the electricity grid, is world leading in the penetration of renewables. There are huge, ambitious plans for more to be integrated and that is absolutely the right thing to do. We need to diversify those supplies and insulate ourselves from the exposure to fossil fuel prices. That is absolutely key.

Does Ms McHugh agree that in order to move towards cheaper bills, we need to move away from fossil fuels and invest in renewables?

That is absolutely a sensible thing to do.

The opening statement referred to the need for more sovereign involvement in this with the National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, and LNG. Does Ms McHugh think there should be more State involvement in the development of renewable energy, particularly wind?

As a national resilience and security issue, energy is a key actor. It is important to our economy and our daily lives and, absolutely, there are policies needed and in place around how we secure our supplies and operate under emergency conditions as well.

The statement mentioned the lack of State investment. Should there be more State investment like Ørsted in Denmark, for example? Norway, obviously, has huge investment.

The State could take a more active role, particularly around offshore wind. There are impediments. The offshore scene is technically challenging. I think we dropped the ball in not developing our offshore wind quickly enough. Any operator that goes to undertake an offshore project has to do a seabed and wildlife assessment. Each operator has to do that independently. That can take up to two years. If the State did that and gave the results to each of the operators, it would speed things up enormously. There are probably certain things that can be done.

Last question, Deputy.

On that point, Mr. O'Reilly mentioned that the potential for renewable to meet electricity and wider energy requirement has been exaggerated and misrepresented. Who is he saying exaggerated and misrepresented it?

I will not identify them. There are huge financial interests in the development of projects. If we take the 20,000 MW DMAP that is being prepared by the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, if all 20,000 MW were to go ahead, that would result in revenue guarantees to developers over 20 years of €136 billion. There will never be any shortage of private sector operators that will invest in renewables in Ireland, or in Britain or in the North Sea, when there are these types of support systems in place. Our big concern with support systems is that we support much more than the country can actually use sensibly and we put too much cost onto consumers. We fully accept that the economic solve of investment in offshore wind farms definitely requires energy certainty in order for people to be able to raise money. Our specific concern, which was identified in both the recent report and the previous one, is that we may inadvertently go too far. If we were to invest, for example, in the 54,000 MW, with near certainty our electricity bills would be an awful lot higher than they are today. One of the big issues in relation to the price of electricity from renewables is that too often the price of the wholesale, such as €86.05 per megawatt-hour from ORESS 1, is the headline figure. What is ignored are all the other costs that go alongside that. The cost of the backup plant, which will do less and less as we put in more and more renewables, will be provided by the private sector once it is guaranteed through capacity payments. EirGrid has an enormous challenge to balance the system. There is a brilliant term that is used, namely, the imperfections costs on the operation of the market.

I sometimes describe our electricity market as a makey-up market, but the imperfection costs for this year will be something like €800 million. That is from the technical challenge. There are the electrical engineering realities coming up against market realities, and costs materialise and end up in our bills.

Is there not a problem with electricity prices being linked to the international gas market-----

The more renewables we have, the less that is a problem because under the contracts for difference, CFDs, if electricity prices are very high and a wind operator, let us say, is getting €150 per megawatt-hour, it is having to pay back through the PSO. That becomes less and less of a problem as time goes on, but whatever electricity you have been generating has to be paid for and it has to be done at 99.97% confidence that the lights will stay on. There are huge costs attached to the latter, and that is the focus of our opening statement.

I have one final question. Is it not the case that in countries like Ireland and Germany, which invested in a whole load of LNG following the invasion of Ukraine, that is where the bills are highest, where we have an over-dependence on fossil fuels, whereas bills are lowest in the Scandinavian countries, which have less dependence on them, and that since the commercial mandate came into the ESB 20-odd years ago, the demand and the necessity for increasing profit year on year will inevitably cause problems?

The Nordic countries have been blessed by geography and geology. They have a lot of hydro, which we can never have as a small island with a great big flat midlands. They have also taken the correct policy decisions on, for example, nuclear energy. Sweden has very low energy prices because it has hydro and nuclear. We cannot have a lot more hydro than we currently have. The ESB exhausted the country's potential for that in the 1950s, and we have decided not to go down the nuclear route. Let us not go down that cul-de-sac here today. The key thing is that we are an island and geography determines that our energy prices will always be that much higher than other places. The key thing we have to do in policy is make sure that they are not much higher than they actually need to be.

Deputy Byrne is about to go down the cul-de-sac Mr. O'Reilly was not about to go down.

I thank the witnesses for the presentations and for the work they do. I would not necessarily say it is a cul-de-sac, but, yes, if we are talking about future energy policy, I suppose the consideration is around alternative forms. In that context, do we need to consider nuclear as a possible policy? I appreciate that in the short term we will not be able to look at it, but what if we are looking into the 2030s and 2040s? I might put all my questions together.

The fact that Engineers Ireland highlight the role of engineers, talent and so on is critical. They might comment on whether there are specific recommendations to our higher and further education system that they want to make about changes happening there, particularly around the use of artificial intelligence in engineering.

I might put a challenge to the witnesses as experts in this space. One of the challenges we are dealing with is lots of misinformation and disinformation. We hear it all the time, particularly when we are constructing solar farms and wind farms. I put it almost as a challenge to the witnesses as organisations: are they doing enough to talk about the importance of the role of engineering in society and evidence-based planning and policy-making? Are they doing enough as organisations and as engineers to counter the misinformation and disinformation, particularly about some of these infrastructure projects?

On the last question, whether we are doing enough, we can always do more. If we got more funding for that, we would be terribly happy.

On the route we did not want to go down, the nuclear one, Mr. O'Reilly can come in later on this, but one thing I will put out there is that we should at least discuss the whole nuclear scenario. Our mindset is that the grid operator would be the one that would have a nuclear power station. Increasingly, we are looking into the RESS. Some of the data centre operators have contact with Google, for example, which has contracted for six small nuclear reactors. They will not be available for several years. That is not a grid operator; that is a private company putting them in its own back yard.

This is precisely what I mean in terms of us thinking to the future, that we would have under, for instance, the private wires Bill when it is enacted a small nuclear power plant. Could the witnesses envisage that happening in Ireland?

I could see the scenario arising where a group of data centres might decide they want continuity of supply at a guaranteed price. Once you put that small nuclear reactor in, you know what your costs are. They are fixed for 20 years or whatever the asset lifetime is. I can certainly see that debate opening up. We will have to balance whether we want this type of industry or whether we will support an SMR, whatever would arise when that debate happens.

On education, is there more we can do? I have referred to apprenticeships. Ireland lags, I think, the European norm on the average in terms of lifelong learning in that once people graduate and go further into their careers, they can jump from one career into another and upskill. I think we are behind the European average in that regard. I think we could do more to help people, as there are peaks and troughs in different cycles of industry, and re-educate people to move into different areas. That could be looked at, particularly from a funding perspective, because later in your career you may be losing a salary or whatever so you need some support there to undertake additional training.

I was going to ask Mr. O'Reilly to comment on the question of nuclear options. I remind the committee that the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly invited us in last month to talk about this. Our stance there was that we referred to an earlier report that Mr. O'Reilly can elaborate on. We are suggesting not that the policy be changed but that this is a possibility that should be examined to see what the financial, political and societal implications of looking at small modular reactors are.

One of the real challenges we have is that we have to think not only long-term but very long-term. If we think about the current plan to deploy renewables, all those renewables projects have actually quite short lifetimes, perhaps 35 years for offshore wind. I would see Ireland perhaps going through a cycle of developing an awful lot of renewables, which is definitely a good thing. Perhaps we could start today to do what we did back in the 1970s. In the 1970s, after those first oil shocks, which ultimately gave rise to NORA, we set up the Nuclear Energy Board. The ESB was challenged and sent a lot of its staff out to learn about nuclear technology in places like Sweden and the United States. Our report on SMRs has recommended leaving the legislative bans in place - they do not need to come out - but starting to free the reins on companies such as EirGrid, the ESB and so on as well as the CRU, as the regulator, and the EPA. Within the EPA there is enormous expertise on radiological protection. That is a core part of its business. There is no nuclear energy radiation but there is radiation in Ireland that it looks after.

We should be doing what Estonia has done. Estonia is a country of 1.2 million people, and over the past two to three years it has got to the point where it has draft legislation to go to the Estonian Parliament to set up the regulatory mechanism for nuclear energy. We should be doing that in Ireland. We should be getting all the way to that point in conjunction with the IAEA, which has a milestone approach to take countries that have no nuclear to the point where they are ready to make - I do not like using the word "adult" - an informed decision. I will not speak for any of the members here, but I believe I will be gone when we have a nuclear power station. I worry about my children and my grandchildren. Geography and geology have dealt us a bad hand. We definitely have a lot of wind, which we should use, but the wind on its own is not enough. Nuclear is an option. We need to back every single horse on the energy spectrum out there in order that we have all the options available to us at the correct point in time. My concern is that if we do nothing now, all of a sudden Britain is planning four of these small modular reactors in Wylfa, 70 miles from where we are sitting, and we are just not ready for it. It would be an awful shame if we did with nuclear what we did with offshore wind.

I will put a final question to Mr. O'Reilly then. Does he believe that by the 2040s we will have a number of these small-scale modular reactors in operation in Ireland?

It is becoming increasingly likely that this will be the case, that these will be an option for Ireland.

If we are thinking about nuclear, it will be the late 2030s or early 2040s we can be thinking of, but we should be doing that thinking today. We should not be waiting for Britain to approve its Rolls Royce small modular reactors, SMRs. We should not be waiting for Ontario and Canada to approve their GE-Hitachi machines. If these countries are successfully deploying SMRs to meet the requirements in countries like Estonia and lots of countries all over Europe, it would be an awful shame if Ireland had sat on its hands hiding behind two legislative bans and was not ready.

Okay. Did Senator Higgins want to come in?

I am sorry, a Chathaoirligh. There is one last question that Deputy Byrne raised. Are engineers doing enough to explain what infrastructure projects entail? The answer is decidedly "No". Engineers and scientists are notoriously bad at explaining what it is they do and why they need to do it. There is a challenge for us collectively, probably mainly for Engineers Ireland.

We have heard about the shortage of engineers and we have heard in previous sessions about the pressure on the CRU and regulators, and the extraordinary challenge that it is. I would disagree with saying that it is not doable. I think it is doable, in order to deliver on our targets for renewables. The suggestion that we would be rerouting the efforts of the CRU, ESB, EirGrid and this limited number of engineers we are trying to redirect towards the hypothetical potential move towards nuclear would seem to be a very poor use of resources for what is a critical period of time, which is the next ten to 20 years when we have these targets we need to meet and get towards. Leaving aside the question of the dangers, the idea that we need to do everything we can does not really sit with that recommendation in the rebalancing policy report around preventing the development of an excessive level of renewables. It almost seems like the witnesses are suggesting the brakes be put on renewables in order to allow this other horse of nuclear to slowly move up on the outside track, to use the witnesses' own analogies.

Do the witnesses want to address that?

I would like it to be addressed but I do want to come back to Engineers Ireland. I might get a short answer to that and then go back in.

Sure. I will have to revert to numbers. The maximum demand in Ireland is 6,000 MW today. By 2050, it will go to something like 12,000 MW. The renewable targets amount to 54,000 MW, which is an inconceivable amount of renewables for Ireland to think about deploying. I do not think we will ever be an exporter of electricity to any significant extent and the trend, in recent years, has been the opposite. Last year, we imported 17% of electricity on interconnnectors. The previous year it was 15% and the year before that it was 10%. We are definitely not saying to put the brakes on the deployment of renewables but what we are saying is we need today to be looking at what level of renewables and where we will put on the brakes. Our specific recommendation - it is quite a complex report - is that the CRU should be required, after a renewables auction, to do a full-system cost-benefit analysis to see if the award of State contracts is going to reduce electricity prices or have a different effect on them and only at that point take a decision as to whether to award those State contracts. I do not know where the 54,000 MW figure has come from; I think it is obviously too big but we need to find that mechanism as to what the sweet spot is for the amount of renewables that make sense for Ireland and not go beyond that.

There is an actual recommendation, which is not just around the CRU. It is specifically around preventing the development of an excessive level of renewables. It suggests a number of policies towards that. As I said, the other factor that does not seem to be there when we are talking about costs is the very significant fines. Engineers Ireland might come in on this. The advantage of pursuing and investing heavily in renewables is that it also has the effect of avoiding or limiting the very significant fines Ireland is likely to face if we do not meet our targets. I refer to a comparison with LNG, which we know is effectively an accelerant on climate in that it comes with methane and methane has an 80-times stronger impact. The witnesses might comment on that fact. It has a shorter, more intense impact. There is a shorter time bounce; in 100 years, it may be gone but in regard to this 20-year period, are renewables not what will deliver us the best chance of avoiding the fines while also having that early curve action in mitigating climate impact?

I might take that. Engineers Ireland's position, and that of the division I chair, would be that accelerated adoption of renewables provides both security and resilience against external shocks from fossil fuel crises. It also provides a diversity of supply in regard to our energy mix. They are something we do not have to import; we have got the generation equipment there, so it makes complete sense from a security, resilience and diversity perspective to accelerate renewables. When we talk about engineering skills, Ireland is very expert in operating a power system with high levels of renewables so we have that engineering skill. We obviously need to bring more people into the profession to grow that skill base and have more people involved. There was previously a question on the need for that as well. Renewables absolutely form a key part of us being able to withstand those external shocks around fossil fuels, and that would be the position of the division within Engineers Ireland.

I have a quick follow-up. The idea of us looking at nuclear was mentioned. This may apply in regard to LNG too, if LNG were to become part of the mix. I refer to the scenario of a group of data centres that may be drawing on this energy.

This is the last question, Senator.

In this context, we know there is the private wires legislation, which is going through. It is a double question. Do we have a risk of effectively having LNG or nuclear serving one industrial actor but not necessarily contributing to energy security on the grid, in that sense? They do not look like they plan to have transmission obligations or demand-side obligations.

It is a complex question.

It is hypothetical in our situation here at the moment but it is happening elsewhere in the world, where private companies are going down that road to satisfy their own needs.

It does not contribute to the energy security component.

I will come in on that quickly.

Go for it, and then Deputy Barry Heneghan has two minutes.

We do have existing in Ireland quite a lot of behind-the-meter types of devices for self-supply on many industrial sites. I am using one particular example but we have that idea, which is increasingly important in our power system - I am speaking about electricity specifically - around the flexibility that is able to help the power system operator. That would be the distribution system operator, DSO, which is ESB Networks, and the transmission system operator, TSO, which is EirGrid, in managing the supply of generation. At the moment we operate, and historically have operated, where demand was pretty much known as a cyclical thing on a daily cycle, and generation was the thing we varied. We are increasingly seeing the ability, through technology and different sources of supply, for the behind-the-meter types of interactions. There are markets there where companies, different sites and different actors can offer what we would call flexibility services as a blanket term but there is that increasing ability of users and electricity to contribute back in-----

From an energy security perspective.

It would do both, yes.

I am sorry Senator, we are out of time. We are tight on time. I apologise for cutting the Senator off. We have two minutes.

I am aware we are under pressure. I thank the witnesses for coming in. I will start off with one question each and then a conjoined question. First, one of the best resources, as the witnesses all said in their statements, is wind resources. From a system engineering perspective, we all discussed what is delaying it. If you had to rank the order of what is delaying it, what is the number one driver of our roll-out of offshore renewable energy, ORE?

To Engineers Ireland - we can go in at the end - we talk about adding generation but the real constraint, as we all know, is the grid, delaying connections and transmission build-out. Private wires and long duration storage, LDS, are things we are constantly pushing but what would the witnesses see as the biggest blockages right now?

In regard to my third question, based on those two questions, with the current energy situation, rising costs, the war and everything that has been discussed, when there is a wholesale price drop during high wind or solar, houses do not really feel it. I had a parliamentary question in about this. What do the witnesses think it would take, technically and system-wide, to introduce real dynamic pricing for households? Is it a technological issue or are we just slow at the roll-out? To conjoin the two - apologies, I thought I had six minutes - if our objective as a whole is to reduce electricity costs for the public, what are the top two engineering issues and infrastructure priorities we need to accelerate immediately?

We will go to the Irish Academy of Engineering.

I apologise. I thought I had six minutes.

If we look at electricity prices, as we move into renewables and because of contracts of difference, CFDs, and all these guarantees that we have on their revenues, increasingly we are looking at a system where all the costs are fixed. There is no amount of competition at the retail level between all the providers of electricity that will reduce on average the cost to consumers. We have huge investment coming in the grid from the transmission grid to the distribution service operator, DSO, and PR6. Some €13 billion or €14 billion is to be invested in a regulated asset base, which ESB Networks will get a guaranteed return on.

All the people providing the back-up electricity generator plant will have capacity payments per megawatt, regardless of whether they run for one hour or ten hours over the course of a year. That is all fixed. All the revenues of the wind and solar farms are fixed, mostly through State contracts but also through power purchase agreements, PPAs, and private companies. Where there are all these fixed costs, there is very little scope. I would argue that there is probably no scope. What we have is a zero-sum game in which if I am smart on getting a tariff that causes my cost to reduce, then somebody else is probably going to be paid for that because all those fixed costs have to be remunerated through this makey-up market, to use that phrase again, that we have for electricity.

On the question on the main factors, we need to get ahead of demand. We are playing catch-up. We are the envy of many countries that we have a thriving economy and lots of companies looking for energy. Let us provide it in advance and build the capacity. Planning is the first issue, and that has been addressed elsewhere with the accelerated task force. The other issue is objections to having pylons built in a back garden or wherever.

Another issue that will help in the longer term is education and bringing more engineers into the system. Education of engineers is expensive. Our universities need more funding for laboratory space to do the training that is needed.

To answer the Deputy's last question, I will hand over to my colleague Ms McHugh.

If I am correct, the Deputy's question was around involving the consumer or household-----

Yes, when will they feel it?

-----and the potential around dynamic pricing. There is a plan to bring in dynamic pricing that for products that would be available to consumers. That is a policy decision. The question here is around empowering but also educating and protecting the consumer. It is important that vulnerable costumers, the people who need their energy supplies, have less ability to interact with the system, are on fixed incomes and so on, are protected. It is a given that those customers must be protected and their interaction managed. There is a set of customers out there where we will have increasing electrification. There will be loads of things in a household that we will be able to dynamically use. For example, electric vehicle charging is an obvious one that we would all be familiar with. Where costumers have the potential to vary their usage without it having an impact on their health, safety or the level comfort in their home, those kinds of projects should be available by the supplier.

When it is difficult for apartment builds, would the organisations be in favour of plug-in solar being rolled out?

Where they are technically feasible and may offer a benefit to the residents in those apartments, absolutely, when there is an engineering solution. The payments and mechanisms around that would be subject to further discussions.

In relation to what we are not doing that we should be doing, we absolutely must be doing master planning, which ensures that we have strategic environmental assessment of the plans for our transmission infrastructure, for example. I address this comment to all Deputies and Senators. Across the board, we need to have unequivocal support for challenging projects like overhead transmission lines. Within a few months, EirGrid will be coming out for a public consultation, which will reveal the extent of the challenge. If we are serious - and I am not suggesting that nobody in this room is serious - about electrification and, by extension, decarbonisation, we need to build an awful lot of unpopular projects.

There is a remarkable achievement by EirGrid to get as much from the grid. There has not been much built in the past ten or 20 years. The amount EirGrid has got from that grid is quite extraordinary. It is a great technical achievement. It is now at a key point, but there has to be a step change in the development of an enormous number of projects. The extent of these will be similar to the two 400 kV lines that will run out Moneypoint up to Dublin. Hundreds of kilometres need to be built. The Irish Academy of Engineering will certainly support that and the master planning of it. We hope to see every single Deputy and Senator in the Oireachtas also get behind EirGrid on the huge challenge it has.

I have a couple of questions. Regarding the cul-de-sac that the witnesses did not want to go down, what I am hearing on the long-term technology mix for energy security and affordability of energy in Ireland is that nuclear has a role. Is that what Mr. O'Reilly is saying?

I mentioned earlier that offshore wind farms have quite a short life. It is maybe 35 years. A nuclear plant built today probably has a life of 70 years. The capacity factor on an offshore wind farm would be about 45%. Nuclear plants around the world are routinely running at 90% to 100%. A nuclear plant of the same megawatt capacity would have four times the output of a wind farm over its lifetime. There is so much potential there. We cannot ignore it. It would be negligent of the country to ignore it. It may never happen, but I believe it will. It is a guess. Who knows what the future holds, but we should be preparing for it.

Regarding renewables and the long-term technology mix, what would be a reasonable aspiration in terms of a percentage of renewables? What should the country be aiming for?

In one of our reports, we speculated. With a figure of 12,000 MW of maximum demand, we speculated having perhaps 5,500 MW of nuclear sufficient to meet the minimum demand on the system and the balance to be made up by renewables and storage. It in itself would have to have some combustion turbines of some description burning either methane or hydrogen.

That is roughly 50%.

I think so. That would be exceptionally optimistic. We need quite a substantial amount of nuclear in the system, however. One of the great things about nuclear is it also does system services. There is now a separate market for things called system services, which effectively were giving free land for nothing by conventional plant in the past. These are now commercial opportunities for companies investing in single condensers, batteries and so on. We simply do not need any of that if we have a large amount of nuclear in our base. That is another area where perhaps some costs could come out.

On Deputy Daly's point, there seems to be a view that if we get renewables right, wind and offshore wind in particular, it will bring down costs. That does not seem to be what is being said here, which seems to be that we cannot assume, just because offshore wind and everything else is done well, that the energy costs will come down. That is a big challenge. Is that what Mr. O'Reilly is saying?

That is 100% what I am saying. We are going from a grid where we had one set of assets - combustion turbines or steam turbines. We are replacing that now with four sets of assets, namely, renewables, assets doing these things called system services, storage assets and we still have to have the same quantity in megawatts of that backup plant. There are four sets of assets to do the job of one. The great benefit of the four sets of assets is they take down our greenhouse gas emissions. It is inconceivable that those four sets of assets can reduce the price of electricity below what it otherwise would have been. That is a real challenge. There is a price to decarbonisation.

We need a lot more analysis from the CRU and publication of what the real numbers are. There are academics in a number of institutions in Ireland doing great work trying to see what the costs are of running a renewables-based grid. This a job that the CRU should be mandated to do and required by Deputies and Senators to do. If it transpires that renewables are indeed the cheapest form of electricity we can have, that would be a fantastic result. I suspect, however, that is not the case.

I thank Mr. O'Reilly very much. We are out of time. I thank all our witnesses for coming in and interacting with us. We could have gone on for another while. We will publish the witnesses' opening statements on the committee's website. Is that agreed?

Yes.

I thank the witnesses again on behalf of the committee. We will now suspend to allow our next set of witnesses to come in.