Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

I thank Senator Dooley for his questions.

On the offshore question, I will make a couple of comments on the renewable saturation that the Senator referenced. Then I will pass over to Mr. Moran to talk about the community benefit and some of our work there. Then I will pass over to Mr. Blount to talk about the engagement during Covid.

On the saturation issue mentioned, there was a very interesting presentation last week by the planning consultants MKO at the Wind Energy Ireland conference. That showed that delivering the 4 GW of additional onshore wind energy we need between now and 2030 would require 0.3% of the land area in Ireland. The amount of land area that is required to develop 4 GW is getting smaller all the time because the turbines are getting more efficient and fewer are needed, effectively. When that 0.3% is dispersed across multiple counties, it should not lead to an oversaturation in particular parts of the country.

In terms of how we see development with communities over time, Wind Energy Ireland carries out a pipeline survey of its members every nine months to understand how the onshore and offshore wind pipeline is progressing in the country. If you look back over the pipeline surveys over the past two years, it has been very interesting to see projects at very early stages of development go from one survey to another and, very often, get smaller over time. That is because they have engaged with communities in the early stages of development. They have optimised the placement of turbines and removed them in certain instances, like Mr. Moran mentioned earlier. We really are trying to bring communities with us and have those discussions at the earliest possible opportunities we can. I might let Mr. Moran and Mr. Blount talk a little bit more about that separately.

The potential for offshore wind energy in Ireland is enormous. We have a challenge of getting to 5 GW by 2030. That challenge is not set by a lack of projects being developed or the developers that are there to deliver it. The challenge is ensuring we get a planning system up and running as quickly as possible, we have a grid system up and running so that projects can be connected to the grid, and we have a route to market so that we have auctions available to deliver 5 GW.

It was a fantastic announcement by the ESB a couple of weeks ago and it is real evidence of the just transition happening from coal to the future of offshore wind energy. The vast majority of offshore projects developed this decade will likely be fixed bottom offshore facilities, predominantly located off the east coast, but certainly some will be required off the south and west coast, most likely, to hit the 5 GW target. We can see floating offshore wind projects playing a role towards the latter half of this decade and certainly into the future.

The programme for Government set a target of 30 GW of floating offshore wind potential. What we saw in our recent UCC report, which looked at getting to a zero carbon economy by 2050, was that we need about 25 GW of renewable energy between now and 2050 purely for our own domestic demand. That is not even taking into account the export potential that was referenced in the programme for Government. I have no doubt we need to continue developing onshore and progressing our offshore development, especially floating technology, as we go out into the 2030s and 2040s, and we need to develop solar energy because we need diversity across the renewables portfolio.

I will pass over to Mr. Moran on the community benefit and he will be followed by Mr. Blount.