Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

There was a follow-on question on the general feedback on the hybrids. There is an ongoing consultation dealing with hybrid grid connections for offshore wind energy, which is due to close next week. Generally speaking, as outlined by Dr. O'Grady, there are a lot of regulatory and market barriers to hybrids, be it wind and solar, wind and battery or solar and battery, which need to be overcome. There is another issue that I am likely to refer to a lot this morning, that is, the need for more resources in our regulator, grid operators and planning system to enable this. For example, currently, a typical offshore wind farm that is progressing towards entering into an auction will have in the region of 40 to 50 full-time staff. Across the entire range of critical Government bodies and State agencies, such as the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, An Bord Pleanála, EirGrid and ESB Networks, the number of staff dedicated full time to offshore is in the region of 50 people.

We are dealing with jurisdictions with much more established markets. Just yesterday I was speaking with a developer in the Netherlands with a staff of 200 people in their centrally co-ordinated grid and planning authority.