Eamon O'Reilly

It's the petrol, the diesel in transport, it's the gas heating your house, it's the kerosene heating in rural Ireland away from the gas network.

So, only just over 20% of the energy we consume is in the form of electricity.

I almost certainly look, I'm not going to forecast the future, but I wouldn't need long odds to bet that we will not be net zero by 2050, nor next turn, nor near it.

It is amazing.

And it's bonkers, to be honest with you, that we have something set in law that we simply can't do.

If we take those two instances that you mentioned, going back to the late 1970s, early 1980s, that is precisely why Moneypoint Power Station was built and was built as a coal-fired power station.

It had a big yard outside it that could store enough coal to keep the biggest power station in the country running for 90 days at full belt.

That middle of last year, the decision was taken to stop that, to stop burning on coal.

Well, Germany's energy policy has obviously been a little bit suboptimal, to put it mildly.

They stopped nuclear.

That immediately meant they had to go to coal.

In order to get off coal, they built up a big dependency on Russian gas.

That's come back and it has bitten them.

Oh, they have to.

I mean, I think that's the key point, Pat.

In the final analysis, you have got to keep the energy flow that allows people to live their lives, businesses to operate, etc.

And when it comes down to the crunch, if the final decision is we should burn a bit of coal, we are saying in the Academy to Finch, we should be prepared to do that and have the coal stocks in place.

No, it's not, because the coal-fired station of Moneypoint was not being operated all that much.

It was there as a generation of last resort.

So you might remember back in 2021, there was a little crisis coming into the winter.