Elaine Loughlin: We badly need the kind of political courage that delivered the Shannon Scheme
Ireland's energy supply has become so precarious that a strategic floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility is now being proposed.
Taking a medium-term view out to 2030, an independent review of the security of supply of our electricity and natural gas systems, published yesterday, suggests additional electricity interconnectors, biomass plants, and hydrogen plants as well as strategic gas storage.
But the development of a State-owned offshore storage vessel that would be used as an emergency backup supply won’t address the very real and immediate concern of possible blackouts and brownouts in the coming months as unprecedented pressure is placed in the grid.
Instead, households are being asked to limit their consumption at peak hours, with the Government rolling out the Reduce your Use campaign in a bid to ease strain on system that is at capacity.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has admitted that some sort of gas storage or backup is now necessary to address the problem in the coming years.
"The reason we would need gas storage is in the event that, in five or 10 years’ time, if the gas supply was cut off, that we would have some other mechanism of keeping everything running," he said.
The Green Party has vehemently opposed the construction of LNG terminals on the island and so the possibility of even a floating storage facility will be a hard pill to swallow for members at a time when we are supposed to be moving away from all fossil fuels.
It didn’t have to come to this.
Ireland is often cited as having the potential to become the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. But it appears that the ambition, innovation, and courage that led to the formation and initial development of this State has been strangled in red tape and a passive approach of dithering and delay.
In 1925, Ireland had come out of a bloody war of independence and an even more brutal civil war — and yet, the fledgling government that was building itself up from scratch had the ambition to approve a state-of-the-art power plant to harness the power from our largest waterway.
In a far-sighted move, one fifth of the national budget — £5m at the time — was diverted towards the Ardnacrusha project in Co Clare, which employed 1,000 German and 4,000 Irish workers during construction.
Ardnacrusha, completed just 13 years after the Easter Rising, and seven years after the death of Michael Collins, was officially opened in July 1929 by WT Cosgrave.
Attending an event to mark Ardnacrusha’s 85th anniversary in 2012, WT Cosgrave’s son and former taoiseach Liam Cosgrave said: “It was initiated at a time when there was no outside money by the then government with immense courage, foresight, imagination and enterprise.
“There was no money from Marshall Aid and of course, no money from the European Union. They had to operate solely from Irish investment — it was a gigantic undertaking.
So why, as our country advances, does our ambition seem to dwindle?
Many would say that, today, Ardnacrusha would never be built — or at best would be held up for decades with objections, deliberations, and judicial reviews.
But we have to get moving as Ireland’s Climate Action Plan has committed to generating 80% of electricity through renewable sources by 2030.
To put this in context, in 2020, just under 40% of electricity was produced from renewables. The overall share of renewable energy was 13.5%, which meant we didn’t reach the 16% target for 2020.
A lost decade where very little emphasis was put on developing green energy through wind, solar, hydrogen, and anaerobic digestion means the 2030 targets are seen as extremely challenging and borderline impossible, unless the current sluggish and convoluted system is drastically overhauled.
While the war in Ukraine is now being cited by many in Government as the key factor in the current energy crisis, this country was facing a significant challenge long before Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Pointing to a warning of future energy shortages issued by Eirgrid five years ago, former head of ESB International Don Moore said: “What happened since? Nothing has happened since.
“You can’t build a power station overnight. We are now talking about importing emergency generation, that’s not something that a developed economy does. You plan in advance.”
Ireland currently produces around four gigawatts of energy from onshore wind farms. The Government now has set a target of producing twice that amount through offshore farms — which have yet to be built — in the space of eight years.
Added to the tight timeframe is the fact that the waters around our coast are a crowded territory with competing interests from shipping, fishing, and tourism — as well as the requirement to increase our marine protected areas from around 5% up to 30% by 2030.
The marine space is also extremely complicated when it comes to ownership and the rules and regulations that must be navigated.
Up until now, responsibility for offshore activities has fallen between many stools across government departments.
Just last week, a campaign to appoint the chairperson and members to the board of the new Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (MARA) kicked off. It is now hoped that MARA, which will be responsible for regulating development and activity in Ireland’s maritime area, will be up and running early next year.
This is a welcome move, but it’s just one example of how slow this country has been in preparing for a future which has to include offshore wind energy.
Officials within the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications are putting every effort into achieving the renewable energy goals, but are also constrained.
Large infrastructural projects do require careful consideration and public buy-in.
But given the energy crisis that is now facing us, surely it is time to set aside normal procedures. Similar to the extraordinary measures taken during the pandemic, we need to adopt a brave approach.
Eight impressive pillars stand in the main entrance hall of Leinster House.
However, on closer inspection, visitors will notice that the decorative pillars are not honed out of marble and are, in fact, painted to look like carved stone.
Artist Don Knox was contracted to carry out the work and signed one of the pillars by disguising his name as a vein in the marble. The artist did not end there; on another of the pillars he hid the name of his daughter Sarah and on a third his wife Catherine’s can be deciphered.
September 26: The Cork Examiner reported on a probe into Britain’s Profumo affair, which centred around John Profumo, secretary of state for war in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government, who had an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model Christine Keeler.
Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons, which was later found to be a lie.
The report found that “it was the responsibility of the prime minister and his colleagues, and of them only, to deal with this situation, and they did not succeed in doing so”.
September 21: In a statement that could have been made today, then finance minister Richie Ryan warned that the “demon of inflation must be brought under control before it devours all our prospects”.
With politicians still on their summer break, it was reported that the Fianna Fáil party had written to the government demanding that the Dáil be recalled to discuss the “grave economic situation”.
September 21: It was reported that then taoiseach Charlie Haughey shrugged off death threats to attend the All-Ireland final in Croke Park, which was won by Meath.
Mr Haughey and then foreign minister Brian Lenihan had been named as prime targets of a UDA plot involving a Scottish loyalist hitman. Gardaí said they were taking the threat seriously and security for the two politicians had been stepped up.
September 20: A 77-year-old Fine Gael TD was forced to publicly apologise to a garda who he threatened after he was stopped trying to drive out of Leinster House while drunk.
According to the garda report, PJ Sheehan tried to drive off at 1am and then told the garda she would get nothing when Fine Gael got into power. It was reported that Mr Sheehan, who was not able to stand property, eventually got a taxi.
The final push: With the budget now exactly a week away, the final bilateral discussions will be held between Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath, and with other key ministers in the coming days.
: Politicians will be pulling on their wellies again this week as the National Ploughing Championships returns for the first time since the pandemic. Taoiseach Micheál Martin and other Cabinet colleagues are expected to make their way down to the site in Ratheniska, Co Laois.
: Jet-setting Taoiseach Micheál Martin will hot-tail it from a field in Co Laois to the UN General Assembly in New York, where he is due to speak on Thursday. Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney will also be in town to represent Ireland at the United Nations.
: TDs from every party and none have been inundated with requests from angry parents whose children have failed to get a place on the local school bus this term. Expect testy exchanges when Education Minister Norma Foley appears before the Oireachtas education committee on Wednesday morning.
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