Mr. Brendan Tuohy:

Yes, it was lashing rain. On the wider grid, I have been hugely impressed by the calibre of people I have met in recent weeks since I came into EirGrid. It is a very specific skill set or series of skill sets. We have only one company of its type in the country and it has an all-island remit. We have EirGrid and we have SONI in Northern Ireland, and we have the Single Market, with which Deputy Ryan is very familiar. The skills base there is really interesting. To be honest, such skills are very hard to get. The other side of that is there is a tangible commitment to delivering the type of targets we are talking about. The CEO, Mark Foley, who has been in before the committee, has presented to the staff and the board has fully bought into it. There are certain skills we will need. One never has them all in-house. The Minister recently asked us to look at the future security of supply and other such issues. A letter was sent to all the chairs of the ESB, ourselves, Ervia and others. We are responding. The Minister has commissioned a review. On the wider grid issue, I will go back to the statement I made earlier, there is no way that we can stop at just the 3.5 GW that we are talking about, which is in the current plan. I think the opportunities on the offshore are huge but it can only be done in conjunction with Europe. In fairness, we have got fantastic support from Europe on the interconnector from France. We recently got more than 50% support from Brussels of €530 million to be signed off next week. There are two issues at play: one is that we are connecting into Europe and if Brexit does happen it gives us direct access, but on the other side, Europe realises that the wind off the west coast of Ireland in particular is part of its resource as well. The land mass of Ireland is 80,000 sq. km, but the Irish water that we own is about 840,000 sq. km. That makes us the third largest country in Europe, if one looks at it that way. In that sense, we have a fantastic opportunity in the long term but we must bring our colleagues in Brussels with us on this.