I welcome the Minister to the House. I am delighted to see him here and hope he is as concerned about wind energy in this country as I am when I look at some of the statistics that I have and some of the issues in County Limerick in particular. There are at least three wind farms being proposed for County Limerick and in that context there are two issues I want to raise, relating to curtailment costs and wind energy maps.

In 2013, a circular was sent to the county councils that said not to amend or adjust their wind energy maps until new guidelines were released. The Minister knows as well as I do that we are still waiting for those new guidelines. Limerick City and County Council amended one of its maps for an area in County Limerick called Creeves. The local authority changed it from orange to green. I assume that was to suit a developer that wanted to put a wind farm there. It was not being proposed as a preferred area for wind energy. The argument is that, if the council can change it from orange to green, why can it not change it from green to orange or green to red, considering the number of objections that are submitted against each of the proposed wind farms.

The wind farms that are being proposed are themselves in breach of the 2006 regulations, where the turbines have to be seven turbine lengths apart from one another. I am not even talking about their distance from houses and schools. They are not, though. From what we can gather, they are 3.5 turbines lengths apart. When you have them that close together and there is a downwind, they become noisier. That is the reason they should be seven turbines apart from one another.

When it comes to curtailment, we have a strategy in this country to achieve 9 GW of wind energy generated onshore. I think we are at 4.5 GW or 5 GW at the moment. I do not know; I am only guessing. We curtail a certain amount of energy because our grid cannot hold it. I know the Minister will reply with all of the different reasons our grid cannot, the constraints and everything else. We know the grid is not up to standard. I want to see the grid getting up to standard - we all do - but it is like putting the cart before the horse, with us putting all of these wind turbines and wind farms in before the grid can actually take that wind energy.

The Minister knows what I will say, in that the cost of energy curtailment is put back on the consumer. The wind farm developers get paid regardless of whether that turbine is turning. They get paid their curtailment cost. For years, we have been promised that wind energy will lower our energy costs, but it is not doing that and we are paying a large amount. In 2024, there was a bill of £1 billion for curtailment in Scotland. If we keep going the way we are going by putting in more wind energy and turbines even when our grid cannot hold it and we have to keep curtailing, we could see ourselves hitting €1 billion by 2030.

I have spoken about this to experts who have worked on wind energy. They are engineers who have designed wind turbines and worked in the United States on wind energy. They are all for wind energy but not the way it is being done here and not in a way where we cannot hold this energy, whereby we end up having to curtail and put a cost back on everyone. The renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, 3 came in and relieved any of these countries from having the cost of curtailment put back on them. I have been told that the Minister could address that. I am not an expert in wind energy. When the wind turbine is turned off, the company is still being paid for wind energy regardless of whether it is producing any. If the Minister could give me a couple of answers, that would be great.

I thank Senator Collins for her questions. I am delighted to be here in the Seanad today to answer them. I will preface my remarks by saying I will not comment on individual applications that have been submitted and I know the Senator will appreciate why. I will speak generally.

As an island nation, we have some of the best wind resources in the world and we are uniquely positioned to lead Europe's renewable electricity future. In Ireland, we are the best in Europe at integrating renewables into our grid. Senator Collins mentioned the grid and I will touch on that in a moment because the grid is critical. Actually, I will touch on it now. The grid investment programme we have published, which is basically the capital plan between 2026 and 2030, will see up to €18.9 billion investment in our grid. That is nearly four times the cost of price review 5, PR5, the investment programme that concluded at the end of December and cost between €4.5 billion and €5 billion.

The investment is needed. It will improve resilience. It will allow us bring more renewables into our grid. Importantly, it will ensure that we can use the energy we are generating and will reduce curtailment and, therefore, curtailment costs.

Storage is a big part of that, as in how we can store renewable energy and then disperse it at the appropriate time, particularly to deal with peaks in energy demand. Only last week, coincidentally, I was in County Offaly where two major battery storage facilities opened. In PR 6, we will see not only generation in grid; a lot of it is battery and it is storage, and that is critical. A lot of our developers are now developing out those storage facilities in conjunction with the renewable energy facilities, be that wind or solar. We have about 1.3 GW of storage now and we are expanding very quickly on that. That will help on curtailment. Next week, and the Senator's question is very timely, I would expect Ireland to reach a milestone of 8 GW of renewable energy capacity in this country, which is really significant. Obviously, offshore is where we are going as well, and I expect the first offshore schemes on the east coast to be in construction by the end of the decade. The original plan was to have them electrified, although they will not be because of planning. However, some of them will be coming out of planning very soon. Ireland was the only EU state late last year that had a successful offshore wind auction off the south east coast, which was the Tonn Nua or New Wave auction. What I am really saying to the Senator is that our energy future and electrification will be very much driven by renewables. If I look at solar for argument's sake, seven or eight years ago, one tenth at 1% was all we were generating. To put it a better way, maybe ten or 15 years ago, we had 2 MW of solar, that is it. We have 2 GW now, and that does not include the 1 GW of rooftop solar we have that is not connected to the grid.

The Senator rightly raised the point in relation to affordability. We still have challenges here in Ireland and across Europe with regard to energy affordability. When we look at the purchasing power index, we are kind of mid-table, but we need to do better than that. That is why people need to see the clean green sustainable energy we are creating actually make savings in their pockets. Only today, coincidentally, Wind Energy Ireland had an independent report published through Baringa, which estimated that onshore wind drove about €1.4 billion worth of savings last year, and solar about €165 million. That is actually looking at what we are deploying versus if we were to continue to import gas and fossil and use it that way.

I will come back to the wind energy guidelines in a supplementary comment because I recognise the community benefits. We need to ensure there is a community benefit for people, and they need to be planned properly. I will come back in on my supplementary comment on that, however.

I thank the Minister for his response. It is great to see that he is not just reading off a script and that he is engaging with this. It is fantastic to see that there are projects going ahead that are going to increase our capacity for holding this energy. As I said, however, it is putting the cart before the horse. Is there any way the Minister would put a pause on these proposals to put more wind energy in until the grid is at a stage where it can hold that energy and where curtailment costs are not going to be added to people's bills?

The second issue is the position or places where they are put. In Limerick county, 70% of the land mass is preferred for wind energy. That is madness. We could be covered in wind turbines when, at the same time, we are trying to look at the offshore energy. Shannon Foynes Port is a fantastic facility for offshore. It is the deepest port in Europe, and it has unbelievable facilities. I have been there. I have seen its plans a couple of times. We could definitely look into getting the designated maritime area plans, DMAPs, a little bit more quickly so that we could move from the south east around to the west coast and look at maybe getting it offshore and stop congesting our rural communities with wind turbines.

Any planning application that goes in is a matter for the planning authority. The Senator knows this; I am stating the obvious. The local authorities decide themselves and then if it is appealed to the board or An Coimisiún Pleanála, they will make the decision. There is no question of us pausing for the development of renewable energy sources. If we have learned anything, and we have learned a lot, particularly since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, it is that the overdependence on fossil fuels from third countries is not something we can sustain. About 25% of our gas resources come from the Corrib, and that is diminishing. The rest is imported through two pipelines from Scotland. It would be problematic if anything were to happen to either of those pipelines. That is the reason I am bringing forward the floating gas reserve, so that we will have a gas reserve to use as a back-up.

On the designated maritime area plan, DMAP, side of things, I have been in Shannon Foynes at least twice. It is really impressive. There are great plans there and it is a great port. We are accelerating and have brought forward a national DMAP. There is the east coast and the ORESS 1 auctions. We had Tonn Nua and will have Lí Bán early next year, which is another auction.

I want to build a pipeline of offshore renewable projects. We have already commenced and we got about €165 million of funding in the capital development plan for the national DMAP. Why is that important? It is so we can look at all our territorial waters, map them on a sequential basis and build up that pipeline for the development sector to deliver them. Our real focus is on renewables, reducing our dependence on fossil, reducing our emissions and delivering clean, green affordable energy for our people. There are communities, and I respect this as well, who have issues on the ground. There needs to be better engagement on the ground. We are looking at reworking the community benefit fund. I can respond in more detail in writing.