Mr. Pat Keating:

On offshore renewable energy, depending on who one talks to the resources out there are 30 GW to 70 GW per annum. For context, the Irish grid is approximately 7,500 GW, so it has a scale by ten of the Irish local grid demand. The current climate action plan is for 70% renewable electricity supply by 2030. That misses the opportunity because the other 90% of availability of potential power on the Atlantic needs to find a market. It will not be potentially the Irish market; it will need to be exported. That can be done in two ways, either by using the power to create hydrogen or ammonia which can be used as a liquid fuel for heavy transport and can be shipped around the world or used on the domestic market or one can build a new super-grid. We have been very active with the industry and the industry has come to us, which is good, with major wind developers looking at the potential to develop the offshore renewable energy in the Shannon Estuary. It is about bringing the supply chain to the resource. Regarding energy, that 70 GW is one part of it that is up for harnessing. It is 30 GW for the Government's programme. That is technology that will increase over time. That is the power aspect but the underlying supply chain is where the real added value exists for the country. The Danish report showed that was where the 14,600 jobs were coming from, not the actual energy generation. It was the supply chain. Facilities are required to manufacture potentially turbines, floating devices for platforms, plus the anchorage systems and all the underlying components. There is a raft of a very diverse engineering type of supply chain required and it is needed near the deep water port to access the energy itself in order to keep operational costs down. For example, for wind, the levelised cost of energy, LCOE, which is the key performance indicator that measures the cost of energy across difference sources, is due to reduce to a similar level as thermal gas generation by late next decade. Everyone in the industry and commentators say the efficiency of off-shore wind will be comparable to the best we have today in thermal gas generation. This is a massive opportunity for Ireland to realise that potential but we have to act fast. We are competing against France, Spain, Norway and Denmark, countries which already have established supply chains in this area. We would like policy recognition from the Government that there is a huge opportunity here.

The next question is how we realise that and what we need to put in place. As I noted in my opening statement, low hanging fruit include the marine spatial plan due next year and an update of the foreshore Bill. They are critically important.