 Minister and Vice President Seskovich ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of ESB I'm delighted to welcome you all here to the roundroom in the mansion house, a venue with huge historical significance for Ireland as it was here that the first ever sitting of Doyle-Erin Ireland's modern Parliament took place back in January of 1919 and there's an iconic photograph on the left-hand side and the way in you might have noticed and just under a decade after that first Parliament meeting ESB was established by the fledgling Irish Free State government to manage Ireland's electricity supply following the development of the Shannon scheme, the country's first large-scale hydroelectric power station at Ardner Crusher in County Clare and Thomas McLaughlin the young engineer who masterminded the project and who went on to lead ESB to become ESB's first chief executive as it were was convinced that electricity held the key to Ireland's economic recovery following the First World War and the Irish Civil War and he succeeded in persuading the government of the day to commit 25% of the already meager national budget to the scheme and summing up his passion for the project decades later he commented that no sincere student could have lived through that whole period of intense national enthusiasm without feeling a passionate desire to do all in his power to assist in national reconstruction and in the building up of the country by development from within it was with this intense feeling I began my career abroad and the ideal never for a moment left me until it brought me home again to see the Shannon scheme realized as I said he was the first chief executive founding father of ESB and this sense of delivering from for Ireland has always been in our DNA in ESB we've always recognized that electricity is not an end in itself but is the neighbor of societal and economic well-being from our personal to our professional lives our communications health education industry practically everything depends on electricity therefore the disruption that Brendan spoke about earlier the disruption is taking place across the electricity value chain today has implications that extend far beyond the energy sector and will touch the lives of millions of people as technology develops and the industry grapples to address this the triple challenges as we know of energy security affordability and sustainability the changes unfolding have the potential to be divisive and alienating unless people understand and buy into a shared vision of where we need to go this is much easier said than done having worked in this industry for over 30 years I can honestly say that the transformation that's happening right before our very eyes is greater than anything I've seen in the past and the future we as we are facing is much more complex more uncertain and more difficult to plan than ever before however it's a really exciting time to be in energy fortunately our in Ireland we're on track to meet our 2020 renewable targets so from a policy perspective we have some time to consider our options and watch how various innovations are developing before locking ourselves into new technologies that may or may not offer long-term customer value the challenge will be to ensure that the policy and technology choices taken are guided by the need for Ireland to achieve decarbonization at least cost and in a way that will deliver enduring benefits for our customers our economy and for society as a whole in my view no one technology can address all of the challenges we are facing rather a mix of technologies working together will be needed to achieve our 2050 ambitions in the most efficient way and preserve our competitiveness and our energy supply the non ETS sector including agriculture transport and the heating sectors also have a crucial role to play these sectors depend heavily on imported fossil fuel and our major contributors to CO2 emissions their transition to clean low-carbon electricity has to be part of the wider solution we are at a point where the traditional energy technology and market models won't be capable of meeting future customer or societal needs and for rapid technological innovation is enabling a raft of possible new solutions that will transform the energy landscape and put customers right at the heart of the energy system the purpose of today's conference is to facilitate an inclusive debate on Ireland's energy future by reaching out beyond the energy sector and looking at this reality of disruption from many different perspectives hopefully we can reach some balanced conclusions about what we want from our future energy system and ensure that we are on a path that will deliver secure affordable and reliable energy for generations to come I'm delighted to see such a diverse lineup of renowned international contributors and to see a huge group of people here in this con in this conference hall today and I look forward to what I'm sure will be a robust interesting and hopefully a stimulating discussion thank you very much