Dr. Brian Motherway:

Deputy Catherine Murphy also asked whether we could be a first mover, which obviously means in what area could we be a first mover. If we look at renewable electricity, in particular, both onshore and offshore, Ireland has one of the greatest potential resources of renewable energy any place in the world. That is the bottom line for me. It is a question of how we maximise the benefit to Irish citizens and the businesses of Ireland.

Offshore energy production, particularly wave energy, is still a while away on a technological level. We need to promote it in order that there will be an industry in Ireland. All other companies involved have cashflow issues. It is a hard sector in which to survive when one is still a number of years away from commercial revenue generation. Some of the successful companies such as OpenHydro in County Louth have partnered with international utility bodies and that seems to be the key to success in a number of cases. We fund a number of wave energy and tidal energy companies, but we are not the complete solution. All of them need to look for other sources of finance, but we will continue to promote the sector. Ultimately, in the medium to long term Ireland can be a global centre for marine energy of various kinds because the bottom line is that we have the resource.

The committee knows very well that there are complex policy questions in the trade-offs to be made in terms of costs and the competing uses of land, manpower and Exchequer resources and so on. The starting point for bio-fuels clearly is wood and waste. We see some very nice examples of forestry trimmings and the use of other waste materials to generate energy. That is the place to start. As the sector grows, the questions become harder in terms of whether we dedicate swathes of our land to grow energy crops instead of food crops. I am afraid that I have lobbed that issue back into the court of the policy makers in term of the various factors to be considered. One has to decide whether we are looking for the cheapest bio-fuel in the world, which may not be Irish, or we are looking for the maximum for Ireland, which may mean that the consumer has to pay a little more for it. These are very much policy questions.

Energy efficiency is driven by a directive. It is driven, in particular, by the EU package of 2020 targets. The level of activity in Ireland is driven by the 20% target set for us by the European Union. In fact, it is not driven by the carbon target but by the sub-sectoral energy targets. This is largely true for renewable energy also. It is an interesting case study in that, first, the targets do not have to be Irish and, second, the targets do not necessarily have to be carbon-related to drive us. In the policy world in which we move it is not the carbon target for 2020 but the energy targets that are most important. They have been significant drivers of activity.