Ireland’s investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot happen fast enough, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said.
He said expenditure on facilities to import and store the controversial gas would be open-ended until all energy security concerns were addressed.
The Taoiseach made his remarks at the Cop30 climate summit where the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, of which the Republic is a founding member, will host several events.
He spoke after attending a meeting of world leaders on the energy transition and said he was encouraged by the signs that renewable energies such as wind and solar were rapidly expanding worldwide.
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However, he said none of this changed his view that the State needed to invest in LNG as a strategic reserve and he did not believe it was a contradictory stance.
“The strategic reserve is a security imperative and that cannot be understated,” he said.
“We depend at the moment and for the foreseeable future on the energy interconnector with Britain. If anything untoward was to happen to that, we would be in deep trouble as a society and as an economy.”
Mr Martin said he was pushing to develop the facility “as fast as we possibly can”.
“As far as I’m concerned, it can’t happen quick enough.”
He also said he would not provide a timeline for when the Republic might become independent of the reserve.
“That will depend on how fast we can continue to roll out the renewable agenda and the offshore wind in particular.”
The annual climate summits, taking place this year in Belém, Brazil, have resulted in limited progress towards ending fossil fuel use since the first tentative commitment to its “phase down” was made at Cop26 in 2021.
NGOs and climate justice groups are pushing for that commitment to be taken further at this gathering, however. Last month, the Irish Bishops Conference backed a worldwide Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, asking the Irish Government to sign it.
Mr Martin said that could be looked at, but added: “Signing is easy – it’s doing the hard graft on policy and implementation and initiatives is the hard work.”
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The Taoiseach also attended a leaders’ discussion on climate adaptation – the measures needed to protect countries, communities and economies from current and future effects of climate change.
He said at home, flood relief schemes need to happen faster and coastal protection and community resilience were also priorities.
“We learned from Storm Éowyn the importance of backup resources to enable communities to deal with the impact of major weather events.”
He said the storm, which cut power to 780,000 customers, had also shown that the electricity grid was too vulnerable and needed to be reinforced.
