Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I welcome the Minister and recognise the vision he has had in this area for many years. That vision and the policies he has developed are now starting to lead Government in a particular way. We have been very good at that aspect of things. While this is not a criticism of the Minister but of the wider apparatus of government, there has been a significant deficit in planning and delivery. I share a lot of the views Senator McDowell expressed. He will know from his time in government just how difficult that is. When we were dealing with MARA, I raised some issues. I believed the ambition as regards when appointments would be made and when the authority would get into action was not sufficient to be effective with regard to the race we are in. The Minister has rightly identified how far behind our competition we are. I recall the former Senator, Brendan Halligan, talking about what was happening with Dr. Eddie O'Connor a number of years ago and identifying, even at that stage, the opportunity available to Ireland. They identified our competitors in the Netherlands and Scotland and noted what Statoil and others were doing. Sadly, the Department resolved to shuffle on, taking things phase by phase and step by step. The Minister was not there so it was not his fault. While such an approach is logical at times, sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, you have to grasp it. It is still not beyond us.

The ambition the Minister has brought to the table from his initial appointment changed the thinking of the ESB overnight. I had numerous meetings with the ESB over recent years about what was going to happen in Moneypoint, recognising that a Government decision had been taken to close the plant there in 2025. There were lots of eyes rolled and hands folded and twisted about. I was told it could perhaps be converted to gas or biomass but the ESB had no plan. When there was a Green Minister in the Department, the ESB all of a sudden rolled out from nowhere a prepared plan. Fair play to it. It has some of the most fantastic engineers and some really bright people. However, when it realised that the policy imperative and focus had changed, we were all of a sudden talking about an offshore wind farm. The commercial sector was already talking about it. We are also going to have hydrogen production. All of this had been processed but the ESB was not leading on it.

I will comment on floating turbines rather than fixed or onshore turbines because those are already in play. The Minister has identified the importance of such technology for us in decarbonising our energy sector. That is a given. Great economic potential is associated with it, along with great capacity to address an issue that is often discussed in these Houses: balanced regional economic development. That has always bedevilled us because, quite frankly, we did not have an opportunity. We did not have gold or silver in sufficient quantities to make a go of it. We did not have oil or gas in any great quantities. We have wind in abundance. The real opportunity is there. I do not know how to action that or how to take the Minister's kind of ambition, vision and policies and create the emergency impetus that allows stuff to be set aside.

I too have real concerns about the capacity of An Bord Pleanála. I do not want to go back over what has been discussed but it is just not tooled up to deal with what it is doing. We all hear about the delays and know about the issues in our constituencies with housing developments that are not progressing. I will not say An Bord Pleanála is procrastinating. I assume it is a capacity issue.

Recognising that 85% of Ireland's continental shelf is at a depth of greater than 100 m, floating offshore will be the main technology through which the targets the Minister has talked about will be met. It goes back to what Dr. Eddie O'Connor and Brendan Halligan have been talking about for a long time: the capacity to export much of that energy to the European market. The Minister will know about the work of Commissioner Kadri Simson and the EU's efforts to drive policies to assist us in that regard.

To go back to the point Senator McDowell made, we need an industrialised strategy to co-ordinate our approach. If we just leave it to the market on its own, it will be a question of who is first up and best dressed, perhaps moving others aside, causing us to lose out. If we do not have an industrialised strategy, that will be an operator from Scotland or elsewhere in the UK. We are used to recognising that most of our fish stocks are fished by Spanish trawlers and, therefore, the notion of our resources being taken or exploited by jurisdictions other than our own is nothing new. If we do not get that right, we will have a problem.

Our ports policy also needs a significant boost. I know of the work that is under way with the task force and Shannon Foynes Port but we are going to have to put our money where our policy is in that regard. We also need to sort out the licensing system inside and outside the 12 nautical miles if we are to get it right in phase 2. If the projects are not delivered by the MARA in 2023, other foreign direct investment may follow the same route as Shell and Equinor. There is a gap there.

I jotted down a couple of quick questions on the way here. To ensure there will be no regional difference in offshore wind in phase 2, we need to put on record that floating offshore wind along the western seaboard will form part of that phase. That kind of signal is needed at this early stage to get that kind of investment in place. Floating offshore wind must be enabled to contribute towards our 2030 targets, which are important from a decarbonisation point of view. When does the Minister hope to publish that phase 2 policy statement? How are the MARA, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and An Bord Pleanála to be suitably resourced? This goes back to the point I was making earlier. If they do not have the capacity, is there a strategy in place now rather than only tooling them up when we want them to act? Is there some kind of process in place to tool them up in advance? Will Ireland's foreshore licensing process be fit for purpose to enable the offshore wind industry to deliver on our climate action targets? From a local perspective, will our offshore grid connectivity be enabled in accordance with the recommendations of that Shannon economic task force? That is important if we are to meet that target.

I thank the Minister for everything he has done and wish him well. I particularly ask him to try to ensure we have the kind of buy-in and cross-departmental support needed to harness this successively from both the climate change perspective and the perspective of economic potential. We need that from other arms of government, including the Departments of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Environment, Climate and Communications from a planning perspective, and from our industrialised policy.