Malcolm Byrne: Flexibility is Ireland's Cheapest Energy Fix

Go raibh maith agat, lasgaoilleg, and thank you and I agree with you, you can be assured in terms of smart use, we don't vote here till nearly midnight, so in terms of energy usage we avoid peak times. I think it's still interesting though with regard to the long term solution, essentially the reason we're paying more for energy costs here in Ireland is we continue to rely on imported fossil fuels and we know what we need to do to get over that. And the others, as you said, the grid infrastructure. What I was quite interested is your point about that here because of settlement patterns, this could be a controversial view, but the fact that it's, when you explained about the wiring and the connections, that it's four times the per capita cost here in Ireland. And I'm just wondering in terms of how you fit in with our overall spatial planning, and this is when I talk about negotiating with Irish Water, because one of our big issues as you'll understand is around housing. We often can't get houses in villages because the fact that there isn't water supply, so if we're going to reduce some of the costs there, it's about the input into that side. And then just one very quick one, which is you mentioned in terms of looking for very specific additional powers with regard to consumer protection, and you might mention what they are. Just on the first part of the question, there are certain things that are locked in, in terms of where we are geographically, in terms of the topography of our grid. But there are also significant opportunities for us. So I do think that how we plan our energy infrastructure and how we utilise spatial planning is critically important, and that includes enterprise development. So if we look at where we site enterprise, particularly energy-intensive enterprise, and how we bring all of the utilities there, or bring them to the utilities, that being transportation, broadband and dark fibre, water, electricity, gas or decarbonised gas if required, that deserves significant analysis and could reap real dividends. Maybe not in the short term, but if we're talking about a generational change, it is okay to take 10 or 20 or 30 years to make that sort of impact, and that's where you get that kind of impact on the topography, let's say. I think Deputy Whitmore posed a challenge to us, to say what is the one or two key things you would do. Not Leas-Caerleach, also posed that challenge to us. I think one of the key things that we've described here is about demand and sustainable demand and flexibility, and that's a heavy industry, that's at grid level through batteries, and that's also people in their homes with their EVs, but just naturally timing their demand. Flexibility is the cheapest way to address security of supply, the cheapest way to bring down generation costs, because you don't need it, and the cheapest way to increase resilience and decarbonisation. It is the single cheapest way of doing that. So if we can do that, it avoids increasing that investment, or avoids some of that increase in investment in the networks that we would otherwise need. Sorry, Chair, I'm just on the consumer protection piece very quickly. I'm afraid I won't give you a straight answer on that, and I wouldn't waste the time of the House suggesting changes in laws that we may not need. We are going to spend, as you said, the next number of months going through the call for evidence from consumers, what do they think we should be doing. We look at that and say, well, can we do it, and if we can't, what do we need to do, which is powers. That could include prepay, it could be gathering data from the industry. We might say we don't have enough powers to gather data from the industry, which is what people here want to hear. We look for powers to do that, and that's an area I would probably be conscious of looking at. We just like to identify those top five things where we might need greater powers that will clearly make an impact on consumers. I don't have that list today. We'll hopefully have it in the next few months. I might suggest, Chair, we schedule a future meeting. Okay. I'll go to that. Deputy O'Carroll.