Ireland's LNG emergency terminal: what the planning record shows, and what it does not yet

Gas Networks Ireland's tender 25/038 is the one State-led terminal filing on our record, and it is a procurement. The June 2025 notice sought engineering design services for an FSRU and associated infrastructure. The January 2026 notice opens a qualification system for operators who can supply and run an FSRU for the Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve: a long-term vessel through an initial competition, and a short-term bridging vessel only if it is needed.

What is missing is any planning application naming a terminal at Cahiracon, Co Clare. We searched the application register we hold, the An Coimisiún Pleanála case lists and the EIA records. The Cahiracon applications that do exist are unrelated: a holiday home, roof works to a house and a livestock shed. That is not evidence that nothing is planned. We do not know how or when consent for the Clare site will be sought, and the press reports describe a site that has not yet reached a public filing.

The Shannon LNG project at Kilcolgan, near Tarbert and Ballylongford in Kerry, is the nearest thing to a precedent. In 2017 a referral asked whether abandoning the project and extending the old permission were material changes; the answer in 2018 was that it was not development. In August 2021 the proposal came back as the Shannon Technology and Energy Park, a power plant, battery storage, a floating storage and regasification unit, a jetty and onshore receiving facilities, and that application was refused in September 2023. The High Court quashed that refusal on 30 September 2024 ([2024] IEHC 555), and after the Board dropped its appeal in March 2025 the same application was reopened as case 322568. The applicant's 2024 environmental report describes Shannon LNG Limited as a subsidiary of New Fortress Energy Inc. and says the 243 hectare site was bought in December 2021.

The later filings separate the package. The power plant and a 120 MWh battery store (ABP-319566) and the 220 kV substation that connects it (ABP-320300) were granted on 13 March 2025, while the 2021 application was still quashed and awaiting a fresh decision. It was reopened in May 2025 as ABP-322568, and no decision date has been published for it. The inspector's report on the 2024 consultation records the 2023 refusal as made because the proposal was contrary to the government policy on LNG at that time. The sequence on the record is: a combined application refused, that refusal quashed in court, the power plant and grid connection granted separately, and the combined application back before the Board undecided.

The applicant's 2024 EIAR for the power plant adds some detail. The plant is a combined-cycle gas turbine of three blocks of about 200 MW. It would take gas from the Shannon Natural Gas Pipeline, a 26 km pipeline to the national network at Foynes that was consented in 2009 and, in the report's words, is to be used "once constructed". The report also describes a future strategic gas reserve facility and a future data centre campus as intended parts of the wider energy park masterplan. The pre-application file for the floating terminal is case 319717, covered below.

The 2025 grant for the power plant was challenged in the High Court by Friends of the Irish Environment CLG. On 1 April 2026 Humphreys J dismissed the challenge ([2026] IEHC 205). According to published summaries by law firms, the court held that the Commission's decision fell within the range of lawful outcomes under section 15(1) of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, rejected the argument that the plant's net emissions were miscalculated because the plant should be assessed in the context of the wider electricity system, rejected a reading of the EU Taxonomy Regulation as a planning obligation, and found the environmental and appropriate assessment grounds not made out; on the latter, the 165 square metres of estuary and reef habitat affected was held to be a negligible and temporary loss. The main reason given for the dismissal was that the grounds had not been raised at the planning stage. One summary quotes the judge as saying that net zero by 2050 "does not mean zero use of gas right now" because the grid still needs to be stabilised. William Fry's summary of the judgment also records conditions on the permission: a ten-year construction window, operation limited to 31 December 2050, and a restriction to a backup electricity role unless fresh permission is obtained. We have not read the judgment or the conditions themselves, and we do not know whether the judgment has been appealed.

Case 319717 is the Board's file on a pre-application consultation, a step that comes before an application. The inspector's report (Senior Planning Inspector, 29 August 2024) says the proposal is for an LNG terminal with two broad functions: a strategic gas emergency reserve facility provided under contract to the State, and an additional route for importing gas to the Irish network. These are the applicant's descriptions. The report does not say a State contract exists, and we have found no contract on the record. It adds that the proposal is the same as the LNG elements of the refused 2021 application, and that the applicant considered the Government's November 2023 energy security review had resolved the policy position behind that refusal.

The facilities described are a jetty able to berth a floating storage and regasification unit up to 300 m long and 50 m wide, an above-ground gas installation shared with the power plant application, about 60 LNG tanker deliveries a year and a 25-year operating period, after which the applicant says it would seek a hydrogen licence or decommission. The report notes the site would be a COMAH establishment, that an EPA industrial emissions licence and Health and Safety Authority approval would also be needed, and that the applicant holds foreshore leases and licences from 2010 extended to 99 years. It also advises the applicant that any future application should address the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, the Climate Action Plan and sectoral carbon budgets, and notes that the National Marine Planning Framework supports additional gas infrastructure where it does not involve the importation of fracked gas. The report does not say where any gas would come from.

The Board's direction of 10 September 2024 closed the consultation in line with the inspector's recommendation, and listed bodies to be served with any future application, including the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Health and Safety Authority, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, EirGrid, Kerry County Council and Clare County Council. The Board also wrote to the applicant and to Kerry County Council on 11 September 2024 that the proposed development is strategic infrastructure, so any application goes directly to the Board. The 2021 application for the same site was reopened as ABP-322568 in May 2025. We have not compared that file with the consultation file, so we do not say how closely they match, or whether the terminal in the consultation is the one in that case.

The record of the 4 July 2024 meeting adds what the applicant told the Board. It said the terminal would hold a reserve volume on the vessel under any future contract with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and would also process extra LNG from tankers for the national network, with two contracts involved, a storage contract and a commercial one. It said the reserve would be under the Minister's control, and that the amount held was set by the Minister and not by a fixed number of days. It also gave an intended timetable: construction from January 2026 for 22 months, six months of commissioning, and operation from the third quarter of 2027. Those are the applicant's stated intentions in 2024. The January 2026 start date has passed and we find no consent for the terminal on the record. Asked about fracked gas, the Board's representatives told the applicant it did not need to address the issue at the consultation stage, but that any application and its impact assessments should be clear enough to show compliance with the policy framework.

On gas supply, the applicant said the terminal would connect to the national network through the 26 km pipeline consented in 2009 (PL08.GA0003). In a letter lodged on 7 August 2024 its consultants clarified that the permission has no expiry date, but that the approval needed from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities to build the pipeline under section 39A of the Gas Act 1976 expired in 2019, and that the applicant intended to apply for a new one in November 2024. We have not checked whether that application was made or decided. The letter also supplies foreshore lease 9597 (the jetty) and licence 9599 (the drainage outfall), which the applicant says are the only two of four foreshore consents it needs for this project.

These are separate projects, and the register does not link them to either terminal. They show the wider run of large thermal-generation consents. Recent An Coimisiún Pleanála decisions include: ESB's conversion of Moneypoint (900 MW) from coal to heavy fuel oil, granted 25 September 2024; SSE's open-cycle gas turbine at Tarbert Island, fuelled by hydrotreated vegetable oil, granted 4 October 2024; a 350 MW open-cycle gas turbine at Tynagh, Co Galway, granted 27 November 2024 (the fuel is not stated in our record); and a combined-cycle and open-cycle thermal power plant with grid connection at Derrygreenagh, Co Offaly, granted 28 April 2026 (fuel likewise not stated in our record).

At Kilshane, Finglas, a 600 MW gas-fired station was withdrawn by its applicant on 8 November 2024, and a 680 MW gas-fired application for the same site (ABP-324305) is recorded as due for decision by 23 November 2026. An open-cycle gas turbine near Athenry (ABP-324113) was recorded as due for decision by 27 August 2026, and we have not yet captured the outcome.

Press headlines on the project, several credited to the Business Post, say that gas for the proposed State-led terminal in Co Clare could be fracked US gas from New Mexico, that the facility will cost 900 million euro, and that gas users could face paying for a disputed new terminal; other headlines say New Fortress Energy's plans remain centred on an Irish LNG terminal and that a judge cited grid stability needs when the Shannon LNG gas plant got the green light. That last point appears in law firm summaries of the April 2026 High Court judgment on the power plant, described above. The headlines point in different directions, and we have not independently verified any of those statements. None of them is a planning fact on the register, and this brief takes no position on them. The register shows only the filings listed above.

A floating terminal still needs shore-side works: a jetty and marine civils, onshore receiving facilities, an above-ground installation to connect to the gas network, pipeline and cable connections and, for a power plant, substations and underground circuits. The 2025 Kerry decisions already contain the electrical packages (220 kV substation and cable circuits) and the plant itself. The vessel is an operator contract through Gas Networks Ireland's qualification system.

The Kerry power plant filing also shows how heavy equipment would arrive. Its abnormal-load assessment (AECOM, April 2024) takes Foynes Port as the nearest suitable port of entry and routes loads west along the N69 to Tarbert, then along the L1010 to the site entrance near Ralappane, a route of about 26 km. It lists 16 pinch points, four bridges or structures on the N69 needing detailed inspection, and notes that the largest items are the steam turbine and heat recovery steam generator modules. That is a design-stage feasibility study, subject to consent, and not a contract.

Nothing here is a live job for a contractor today: the State-led site has no consent on the record, and the combined Kerry application (ABP-322568) is undecided. The useful signal for a supplier is the sequence: a decision on ABP-322568, an initial competition under Lot 1, and a first commencement notice against any of the 2025 grants.