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A location, no ship, no date — the emergency reserve stalls while commercial LNG races ahead.
No EU country is more exposed on gas than Ireland. It has no storage, effectively one import route — the interconnectors from Scotland — and a single domestic field, Corrib, now in terminal decline. Gas still generates about two-fifths of the electricity. The State’s answer, approved in March 2025, is an emergency-only floating reserve; fifteen months later it has a chosen site and little else.
Six observations stand out: Ireland is Europe’s most exposed gas system; the State reserve has a site and no ship; officials say “the end of the decade” before it runs; Corrib is running out, pushing import dependence past 90%; the commercial terminal overtook the public one (Shannon LNG consented, judicial review dismissed); and the bridges are hired gas and future biomethane — €269 million of temporary generation, and an indigenous gas route close to a standing start.
The consequence: gas-supply risk in Ireland is real, rising and largely unhedged at the system level. Anyone whose operations depend on gas — power generators, large industrial users, the agri-food sector — should treat continuity of supply as a live risk to be managed privately, not one the State has yet solved.
Ireland has correctly identified that it is Europe’s most exposed gas system and that it needs a store and, ideally, a second route. What it has struggled to do is deliver either at the pace the risk demands. The State reserve is the right instrument and it is stalling; the commercial terminal is filling the gap, but on a private developer’s timetable and terms — and the two have not been reconciled.
Gas is the security-side of an integrated picture: the gas plants it fuels are the dispatchable backbone that firms the wind-heavy grid of IE001; the renewables of IE003 and the storage of IE004 are what would eventually shrink the dependence; and Gas Networks Ireland’s 2045 pathway plans the network’s own exit from fossil gas. A gas-security failure in Ireland is a power-security failure — telling the two risks apart is the analytical task.
The shape of this volume. § 1 sets out the headline figures. § 2 develops twelve findings, each confidence-annotated. A chapter-weight pull at p. 14 anchors the argument. § 3 decodes the exposure and the response — the reserve, the terminal and the collision between them. § 4 sets out the pipeline and the projects. § 5 decodes the bridges — temporary gas, biomethane — and the 2045 exit. § 6 sets out recommendations, with a one-page tear-out at p. 25.
Imports were 78% of gas supply in May 2025, arriving in practice through one corridor — the Moffat interconnectors from Scotland. As Corrib declines toward cessation around 2030, dependence heads past 90%. Ireland is the only EU member state with no gas storage; gas generates about 41% of the electricity.
Today’s dependence (umber) against the post-Corrib trajectory (dashed). Every other finding in this report is a response to this one fact.
HIGH — anchored to a named Irish primary source (CSO, GNI, gov.ie, EirGrid, the Oireachtas record). MEDIUM — direction of travel confirmed but a material figure is unpublished or contested. Every forward position is labelled as a projection.
Findings 01 – 12 · summary
Findings 01 – 09 follow in detail · pp. 11 – 13 · 10 – 12 carried on the § 6 matrix
Ireland is the only EU member state with no gas storage and, in practice, a single entry point — the Moffat interconnectors from Scotland. Imports were 78% of gas supply in May 2025 (CSO), rising to about 80% via the UK interconnectors by September 2025. There is no second route and no buffer. This is the definition of a single point of failure, and it sits under a power system that draws about 41% of its electricity from gas. Most European systems manage gas risk with storage, multiple pipelines and LNG terminals; Ireland has none of the first, one of the second, and — until Shannon LNG — none of the third. The exposure is structural, not cyclical: it does not go away with a mild winter or a good year at Corrib. Every other finding in this report is a response to this one fact.
The Government approved a State-led Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve — a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) holding 170,000 m³, about six months’ supply for 200,000 homes — in March 2025 (gov.ie / GNI). In November 2025, Gas Networks Ireland selected Cahiracon, Co. Clare, on the Shannon Estuary, as the site. Beyond that, the project is largely unbuilt: the vessel is not procured, and the ownership model — full private, full GNI, or a joint venture — remains open, with GNI running a request-for-information that left all three possibilities on the table. A reserve is only useful if it exists before the emergency it is built for; this one has a location and a legislative vehicle, and not much else.
Officials told the Oireachtas climate committee that even on an accelerated path it could be the end of the decade before the reserve is operational — planning permission is still needed and a final business case is years off (Irish Examiner / TheJournal, 2026). A reserve intended to cover a supply emergency is itself years from being ready for one. The gap between the urgency of the diagnosis — Ireland’s exposure is acute now — and the timeline of the cure is the central weakness of the State’s response. It also means that for the rest of this decade, Ireland’s gas security rests not on the reserve but on the resilience of the Scottish interconnectors and the goodwill of the British system, which is a thin margin for a system with no store.