Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Energy independence and all of the benefits that arise from that are our moonshot for the 21st century. That involves offshore wind, onshore wind, solar energy, interconnection, battery storage and all of those things put together. It makes sense to do this in a plan-led way, doing what is cheapest and quickest first and then doing what is most expensive and hardest to do thereafter. That is the general approach we are taking as a Government. People often ask why we have not done more offshore wind generation to date and it is because we have done so much onshore wind generation. About 40% of our electricity comes from onshore wind but the next big step is offshore. The Deputy asks a technical question, which is a valid one. The Minster, Deputy Ryan, has a paper on that which I have seen but I do not want to give the Deputy an answer that might be inaccurate. However, we will come to the Deputy with some more detail.

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