Mr. Barry O'Flynn:

In the area of green finance, we have an opportunity to leverage the IFSC to attract green capital. Green capital will move into the IFSC when it has somewhere to deploy the capital and it sees the skills and capabilities there. This country has that and there is a big initiative currently to try to increase it. It is a tough one because many other countries are competing for the same capital. There is no home currently for green capital. London currently attracts a lot of capital but Singapore, Toronto and others are trying to attract it. The issue must be tackled on an ongoing basis because it is tied to the money being deployed locally. If that is the case, it would be attractive, but if that is not the case, it would be more difficult to attract investment.

Access to credit has been difficult in recent times. Project finance has been tough and expensive. There are roles for venture capital funds to provide support for SMEs in this space. SMEs need to be able to provide a solution to our existing problems. It needs to be very clear what the money is being used for and where the opportunity is around the deployment of the capital.

Energy efficiency is the cheapest way to get one’s money back as it will pay for itself rapidly without any external support. It is challenging to structure it in the right way. We have seen that with the Green Deal in the United Kingdom, but if designed and implemented in the right way it will work, and it has been seen to work in a range of countries to date. There is a good working group currently – the better energy finance team – in the residential sector. Public sector building stock is probably the most attractive from an investment perspective because one landlord is involved, which means one party is going to pay one back rather than 200,000 houses with 200,000 credit histories. I would tackle that one as a near-term opportunity to attract private capital to deploy in the sector and to drive down energy consumption and emissions as a consequence.

In terms of jobs and manufacturing, offshore wind is growing rapidly in the UK. That is a key market. Siemens and DONG Energy have set up operations in Belfast to export into the UK market. We should consider doing something similar. If we develop an export opportunity, it will act as a catalyst in attracting the supply chain to this country. There are localisation rules that must be investigated. There must be scale as that will attract people. Everything built to date in this country has all been imported because each project has been small. If there are large procurements and projects, that will change the nature of the business and force and encourage localisation into the Irish market.

On the use of the monopolies, the ESB has done much good work on the innovation side of things. It should be encouraged to continue on that route. What it does on electric vehicle infrastructure must tie in very well with the planning in terms of putting infrastructure in place and support incentives to get vehicles on the road and to ensure that the procurement for any future vehicles, private or public, encourages that type of technology. Electric vehicles are coming whether we like it or not. It has not been as fast as everyone expected but all of the automobile manufacturers are going down that route.

On oil heating, as of this year Denmark has banned oil heating in new houses and by 2016 existing houses cannot install oil heating. The policy is quite draconian but if one puts in those measures, it forces the market to respond. We have various technologies available currently. There are interesting electric storage innovations involving leading Irish companies in this space which will facilitate renewable energy. A range of other technologies are being deployed worldwide to support domestic and residential heating. The right policy measures over time are required so there are no sharp shocks but people are clear that something needs to be done by a certain date. That will encourage a change in building stock. The building stock should be the priority to drive down energy costs and emissions in the near term.

Agriculture is a tough area and will continue to be so. We must work around that and come up with creative, innovative solutions and mobilise our links into emerging international markets, in particular countries that will be most affected by climate change, and use their challenges to meet some of our offsets and make it more of a holistic Ireland Inc. approach to addressing issues and being able to deploy Irish enterprise in the process.