Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the biggest things to recognise is that Dublin Airport is reaching capacity. I know there is an additional runway but that is not going to meet demand as we head towards 2040 and 2050. People who understand the infrastructure of Dublin Airport know it is reaching a point beyond which it cannot go. There is a lot of latent capacity at Shannon Airport. There was an initiative by a previous EU Commissioner for Transport, Commissioner Violeta Bulc. Her vision was that countries should invest in the connections between key infrastructure, such as airports, to ensure that if there is latent capacity, it is utilised, rather than building additional runways or terminals, and thereby benefiting the cities in between, in essence. That vision may still be in the bowels of the European Commission but I think our guests are already clued into it. I thank them for that.

I will follow on from what my colleague referred to about offshore potential. Our guests have talked about Rosslare. Perhaps this proposal will be way off the scale and impossible but do our guests see any opportunity for a rail link between Moneypoint and the wider rail network? It would recognise the potential for floating offshore wind development off the west coast of Ireland, particularly in Moneypoint. It is probably at that point most of the electricity is going to come ashore. The ESB has plans for generating hydrogen there and other operators will want to do the same thing.

It may be that Moneypoint, in addition to being the landing point for electricity, has the potential to become a major hub for hydrogen. Is there potential to have a rail connection to the plant, purely for hydrogen freight?