Eamon O'Reilly

I suppose it is impossible to predict what's going to happen.

I think that's the essence actually behind our reports.

There is enormous uncertainty in the future.

There has been enormous uncertainty in the past.

And it is a bit like house insurance.

If you can get along hopefully through your life without insuring your house, all of a sudden there's a fire and you regret not having house insurance.

Energy security is like that.

So for a country like Ireland with such a huge dependence on fossil fuels, 83% of our energy, it's imported, it's gas and it's oil.

And we have zero energy security stores that we can access when we need to in the worst circumstances for gas.

We have a lot for oil, for heating and for transport, but we've also almost nothing for electricity.

We certainly aren't.

And as you mentioned, air grid, air grid have a standard that they have to adhere to.

Three hours loss of load expectation.

What that translates into is 99.97% certainty that air grid can provide all of the electricity needed for all of the demand throughout the year.

So at that level of supply obligation, you have to make sure that you're able to supply

to meet all of that demand.

And every year in the winter, they come out and say how they're ready to do that.

It isn't, Pat.

And there is very frequently in discourse, the terms electricity and energy are used interchangeably and they're definitely not interchangeable.

So, about 80% of the energy that we use is in the form of fossil fuels.