Pat O'DohertyOn behalf of ESB, I’m delighted to welcome you all here to the Round Room in the Mansion House, a venue with huge historical significance for Ireland as it was here that the first ever sitting of Dail Eireann, Ireland’s modern parliament, took place back in January 1919.Just under a decade later, 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 hydroelectricity power station at Ardnacrusha in Co. Clare.Thomas McLoughlan, the young engineer who masterminded the project and who went on to lead ESB, was convinced that electricity held the key to Ireland’s economy recovery following the First World War and the Irish Civil War, and succeeded in persuading the Government of the day to commit 25 per cent of the already meagre national budget to the scheme. 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 whom again to see the Shannon Scheme realised”.This sense of delivering for Ireland has always been in ESB’s DNA.  We recognise that electricity is not an end in itself but an enabler of societal and economic wellbeing.  From our personal to our professional lives, our communications, health, education, industry – practically everything depends on electricity. Therefore the disruption that’s taking place across 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 the triple challenges 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 sector for over 30 years I can honestly say that the transformation that’s happening now is greater than anything I’ve seen in the past and the future we are  facing is more complex, more uncertain and more difficult to plan for than ever before.Fortunately in Ireland we are on track to meet our 2020 renewables 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 decarbonisation at least cost and in a way that will deliver enduring benefits for our customers, our economy and 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 the 2050 targets in the most efficient way, and preserve our competitiveness and energy security.The so called “non-ETS” sectors, including the agriculture, transport and heating sectors, also have a critical role to play. These sectors depend heavily on imported fossil fuel and are 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 traditional technology  and market models won’t be capable of meeting future customer or societal needs,  and where 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.We need to embrace this disruption and make it work for Ireland. However, without informed debate about the reality of the challenges and proposed solutions, it will be very difficult to overcome public resistance to the changes required so that we can move ahead at the pace we need to effect real change.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 the 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 am delighted to see such an diverse line up of speakers contributing to this conference today, and I look forward to a robust and interesting discussion!Ends