Michael McDowell: Green policies are increasingly divorced from reality

Eamon Ryan chose this week to make two eye-catching pronouncements. He first hinted that he was contemplating a change in the Government’s renewable energy target (currently 70 per cent by 2030) to 80 per cent by 2030. We weren’t told whether this had been agreed between the parties in the coalition.

The Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment than indicated that he was considering creating a railway link between Derry and Letterkenny with a view to providing rail connectivity between Donegal and Cork, via Derry , Coleraine, Antrim, Belfast, Dundalk, Dublin, and on to Cork and other places on the Republic’s rail network. There was to be a joint North-South study done on the Derry-Letterkenny railway idea. The Green Party’s Donegal branch is very keen on this idea.

Taking the energy target first, it comes at the end of a three week period in which we have been warned about the immediate possibility of electricity blackouts or brown-outs due to lack of functioning generation capacity. Proposals to deploy emergency standby generating capacity had, apparently, run into trouble on the basis of a potential legal challenge to do with procurement.

It is by no means clear that the existing 70 per cent renewable energy generation target can be met – especially in the context of an expected increase in demand of the order of 30 per cent to 40 per cent in respect of the burgeoning data centre sector which seems to have the active encouragement of Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s Department of Enterprise.

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The idea that Donegal's connectivity needs with the rest of the Republic could be satisfied by a rail link via Derry, Coleraine and Newry is bonkers

The obvious conflicts between backing a major expansion of the data centre sector and sustainable control or reduction of overall demand for electricity is simply brushed aside by a Government that is not levelling with the people as to the implications of its policies. This issue has been swept under the carpet for years at interdepartmental level. We need to know the truth. And now.

As I have said here recently, Minister Ryan has made the Delphic utterance that nuclear power cannot be ruled out as a solution to Irish energy needs. The real question is whether it must now be planned for to ensure the country’s energy security. On that issue too there is silence.

Connectivity

As for transport connectivity with Donegal, there is an air of fantasy about seeking to achieve it by an extension of the Belfast-Derry line to Letterkenny. Newton Emerson wrote here earlier this summer about a similar proposal by Ryan to develop a high-speed rail corridor from Cork to Dublin to Belfast.

Northern transport minister Nicola Mallon makes similar comments about a high-speed Belfast-Derry rail service. As Emerson pointed out, Iarnród Éireann’s own examination of high-speed rail found that there was no justification for such investment anywhere on this island.

The idea that Donegal’s connectivity needs with the rest of the Republic could be satisfied by a rail link via Derry, Coleraine and Newry is bonkers. There is a different and sensible road project – the start to construction of which was announced by Varadkar in January 2018. This project was to have a spur to Letterkenny and to Dungannon.

But Ryan has put a stop to all new major road projects, citing a switch to town bypasses in order to encourage us all to live in under-populated rural towns – another Green policy. The cross-Border A5 motorway project should be reinstated, and the alternative proposal for a rail link via Derry and Coleraine scrapped.

Leo pledges tax cuts while Ryan plans massive infrastructural expenditures. Who or what is going to pay for Sláintecare if, and when, it is implemented?

We really do need a dose of realism in relation to developing our country in a sustainable way. Climate change does not require us to become a nation of eco-hobbits. Trucks, whether powered by hydrogen or eco-diesel, still need to be catered for, along with one million electric cars. Where would we be if the existing motorway network had not been constructed in the last 20 years? We need to complete that network to bring balanced spatial and economic development to places like Kerry and Donegal.

Fictional

The Construction Industry Federation has queried the deliverability of a €500 million retro-fitting of homes. Afforestation targets are not merely not being met; they are becoming fictional at this stage.

The parties’ autumn think-ins are showing a considerable degree of detachment from political and economic reality. Leo pledges tax cuts while Ryan plans massive infrastructural expenditures. Who or what is going to pay for Sláintecare if, and when, it is implemented?

Connecting Letterkenny by train to Dublin via Belfast does not address the real needs of the people of Donegal as the A5 project would. It is a pipe-dream – an example of riff’n’spliff politics at its worst.

We are falling down with shelved plans for rail transport from the underground Dart to the Lucan Luas to the western rail corridor. We need implementation of what is practical – not further smoke-rings blown by would-be Gandalfs.