Mr. Eamonn Confrey:

Many of the devices to which the Deputy is referring, including wave or tidal, are at pre-commercial stage. There are supports through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, and the prototype development fund which is designed to try to bring some of those technologies forward. The Deputy is correct in terms of the scale of we need to reach. The west coast generally, particularly in the context of offshore winds and larger wind turbines, is ripe for that but it will take time because conditions there are quite challenging in terms of water depth and so on. A significant amount of Government funding has been invested in test site infrastructure through successive years. We have wave-testing pools in Cork and quarter-scale facilities in Galway and we are moving to a full-scale test facility off the coast of County Mayo.