Dr. Peter Heffernan:

We are working closely with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland.

We seconded one of our leading experts to help develop the ocean energy development plan. There are three elements involved in going from an idea on a lab bench out to a full-scale device and the infrastructure there has been built up as per the strategy. We have a world-class centre being fully developed in Ringaskiddy in Cork as part of the collaboration between the Naval Service, Cork Institute of Technology, CIT, and University College Cork, UCC. That has received a substantial amount of funding through Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, building on a decade of funding from the institute. There is a full test laboratory for modelling, designing and working with innovators and inventors. It is world class. The next step is quarter scale. The site is up and running in Galway Bay and will be enhanced and improved next year with the deployment of a broadband cable and new sensor technologies all around the devices to do such things as measure sound from the devices and to understand the environmental interplay.

The third key element as part of the strategy designed was to have a full-scale test site available and connected to the grid to really test the devices when they are gone from a lab set up in Cork to a relatively sheltered site. If I am not mistaken, on that site we have had waves of up to 7 m, 8 m and beyond in Galway Bay so they are getting a pretty good quarter scale test. Anywhere on the west coast gives one a good test. Even though I am a Mayo man and there is nothing between Mayo and Fenit in the context of the Belmullet site, a comprehensive study was carried out by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, to look at potential sites for the full-scale test site and, all things considered, Belmullet was chosen.