Lord Deben:

Yes. The system has been successful. It has also exposed a problem. If a nation is one of the longest standing countries with a grid system, it will find that the grid was not built for this. Rather, it was built for big generating centres. There are still people who hanker after that. I tease my colleagues in the Conservative Party that they like big things that they can build and look and point at. Somehow or other, they feel that windmills are a bit like fairies, that is, they are not really there. The great achievement of offshore wind is that we have shown people that it is not an impractical joke system. Next to onshore wind, it is now the cheapest way of producing electricity.

It is an amazing achievement. We should occasionally remind ourselves of how far we have come in the past ten years. It is amazing. Nobody would have thought that we could have moved as far as we have already.

Deputy Neville and Senator Paul Daly spoke about farming. It is very tough and very difficult, but we have to recognise how much can be done. Ten years ago nobody thought that the United Kingdom would end up with as many wind farms as it has now and become the leader in wind technology. Nobody would have believed that. Similarly, today nobody would believe that Ireland could be the leader in how land use is changed, both in terms of peat use and in agricultural use, globally.