Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I wish to say a few words about this important topic. We need to acknowledge a number of things. As he said, in 2004, I believe we had the first significant wind farm in Europe built off the coast of Arklow. That was Ireland moving ahead. However, Ireland is now behind the curve. As he also said, we are in a race, but we are behind in the race and we need to acknowledge that. Scotland, for instance, has greatly outpaced us. I believe it has 4,000 people employed in the offshore wind energy business. It has taken major steps using its infrastructure to establish onshore marine facilities to service those facilities.

We cannot in the slightest bit be complacent, nor does it suffice to simply throw out statements about what a golden opportunity we have. Everyone accepts that Ireland has a golden opportunity. Everyone accepts that Ireland has an enormous resource in wind energy if we can put together the means to harvest it, integrate it into our economy and become an exporter of electricity and possibly hydrogen generated from it. All of those are good aspirations and I fully support them.

In his contribution, the Minister mentioned that MARA is still tooling up in respect of personnel appointments. The first round of auctions is due to take place in April this year. When flying to London, the plane begins to descend over Liverpool. We are now more than halfway through the life of this Government. We do not yet have an operational regulatory agency for offshore wind power generation and we have not conducted the relevant auctions. We are behind the curve in respect of all this.

The Minister has laid emphasis, as doubtless he would, on the importance of combining the regulation of this matter from the point of view of MARA on the one hand with the pre-construction and operational matters that will fall to An Bord Pleanála. In that context, he mentioned the need to upskill An Bord Pleanála. I am beginning to think An Bord Pleanála is doing far too much. On the one hand, it is measuring the height of tower blocks in Dublin and, on the other, it is supposed to be working on the marine and ecological aspects of offshore floating or non-floating infrastructure. For a single agency to be able to take that on is doubtful. I do not want to propose reinventing the wheel but I wonder whether we should not have an accelerated programme with a specialist agency to look at these matters and thus simply have experts around the table deal with it quickly and get on with it in a way that dovetails neatly with the regulatory arrangements because of issues we have with energy at the moment - I will not call it a crisis. I note what is happening in the UK, which is appealing to people to turn off electrical appliances and rewarding them. We are not out of the woods yet in respect of these matters.

Most important, we have considerable work to do in building in Ireland sufficient port facilities to support an offshore wind generation capacity of the scale of which the Minister is speaking, the 8 GW or whatever. If that is to happen, either it will be serviced from the west coast of Britain, the Netherlands or Belfast, which is ahead of us in this regard, or it will be the basis of our native industrial capacity here. I hear general talk about setting up various groups to study this, that and the other about ports. The time for a study is passed; it should have taken place 18 months ago. The time for action is now if we are to catch up in this race. I accept the Minister's analogy of being in a race. It is a race against many things environmentally and planet-wise. I accept we are in that race.

There is a sense of inertia that the only body that can decide planning matters in Ireland is An Bord Pleanála. It has not done a very good job of it. It has not been fit for purpose in many of the things it does. I do not believe it is appropriate to trust to it this area and to propose giving it additional expert human resources to enable it to do very complex and totally different tasks. As I said, working out whether apartment blocks should be south facing or north facing in Dublin is very different from the obligation to try to work out what can and cannot be done in areas of marine conservation by anchoring offshore floating facilities and or having fixed floating facilities and the ecological consequences of doing those things for fisheries, species diversity and the like.

We need a renewed sense of urgency about all this. We cannot relax about it. I will say more about Derrybrien when I introduce legislation in this House to deal with that issue. However, we cannot relax on the whole question of how quickly and how effectively we achieve the targets that the Minister spoke about with such inspiring rhetoric. We need to galvanise the machine to deliver. I do not accept that An Bord Pleanála is in a fit condition to do this. I regret that MARA is now only tooling up in respect of key appointments to be in a position to carry out its very necessary function. I do not accept we are doing a good job in developing our port facilities to support the kind of scale of industry the Minister is speaking about.It is easy to speak about all of those things but it is difficult to achieve those steps that would give rise to great economic benefit for this country. I do not want to be negative. I share the Minister's ambition but I query whether we are deluding ourselves by talking about realising those ambitions rather than taking concrete steps to achieve them.