Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The memorandum of understanding was signed in Dublin by me and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change as a first step towards an intergovernmental agreement.

What I have set out in my opening remarks is the timeframe imposed on us by the European conditions. There is a huge lead time in any major energy project and, from that point of view, as I have said - I announced it publicly a few weeks ago - there is a doubt about the capacity to conclude that at this particular time. The summit meeting in London between the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister asked the two Ministers to look at whether there would be an alternative architecture that might facilitate it. As I said earlier, we are looking at the outcome of the London summit. I can tell the committee that site costs versus delivery point, as the Deputy put it, is not the issue and is not an issue in these discussions. Deputy Brian Stanley has welcomed the British position, but if one is enthusiastically in support of an agreement between two countries, one must admit it takes two to tango. One does not enter into a bad agreement purely because the other side is demanding X, Y and Z.

As regards the Siemens development in Hull, I am not sure that is relevant. The advice we have from the prospective developers and prospective manufacturing projects brought to us by the IDA is that it would make great sense in a project such as this to have the manufacturing close by because it is immensely expensive. Whether that is all or part of it, and so on, is open to negotiation, but that would be a very important aspect of it. It is not irrelevant in the context of the way the UK Government might be looking at it, because if one had a significant manufacturing project on the east coast of Ireland, it could service more than the Irish need. I tend to think that the Deputy is not the first one to think about that.

With regard to the Aarhus Convention, I have tried to hammer this for months - but apparently with little success - by explaining that the renewable energy policy planning framework will be subject to a full strategic environmental assessment, SEA. I have said that many times. People read what they want to read and believe what they want to believe, but that is the situation. This committee knows more about SEAs and the planning area than most. People either accept that or do not.

Deputy Catherine Murphy wanted to know the prospects for offshore wind energy, wave and tidal energy and so on. A month ago I published the offshore renewable energy development plan, OREDP, which sets out, in 40 pages or so, our approach. We have had a very interesting exchange of views so far, but nobody has mentioned wind, except Deputy Brian Stanley, who is opposed to it - opposed to its being sold to the Brits, that is.