Mr. Neil Davidson:

If I could just add a little colour to that, I work for Aquamarine Power, which is a wave energy company. We have developed a technology called Oyster, which is a near-shore device that is essentially a flap that moves backwards and forwards in the near-shore wave. We are a Scottish company but we have a very large amount of Irish DNA within the company, from chief executive down.

It was said there are small amounts of development, which is correct, but we have definitely moved out of the test tank to the stage where, as Mr. Appelbe said, 11 full-scale devices are being tested in Orkney. To give an idea of the economic impact that can make, our company has spent more than £5 million directly in the Orkney economy, which is an economy of 20,000 people as it is quite a remote island. We work with more than 40 local businesses on the island, upskilling dive teams and so on. There is a very strong economic jobs story for local communities, even at the prototype stage.

The importance of this Bill is the opportunity for Ireland. As we move from single devices to first projects, such as WestWave, the one thing Scotland does not have, which Ireland does have, is grid connections. Some 90% of the wave projects in Scotland are based on Scottish islands and none of those islands has sufficient grid connections and may not have them until much later on in this decade. The WestWave project may, in fact, be Europe's first pre-commercial wave project, so there is a real opportunity here for Ireland to leapfrog what has happened in Scotland, given that Scotland does not have the grid connectivity.

As Mr. Appelbe and Mr. Coyle said, one of the most important foundations of that is a clear consenting and licensing process. Without the consenting and licensing process, companies do not have the ability to invest in EIAs and all of that kind of thing in order to develop the first devices. It is a real opportunity for Ireland.