Mr. Peter Coyle:

To take the Danish islands, I am not advocating lookalike islands in the wild waters of the Celtic Sea and Atlantic Ocean just yet. We have other fish to fry, if members will pardon the expression, between now and then and many things to get done. It is just an indication of what could happen and what we should be thinking about going forward into the 2030s.

I am happy the officials, who, obviously under general political direction, oversee the running of this area, are taking quite a visionary approach to all this. In my experience in recent years, they are people of considerable ability. The challenge is they are trying to create in detail a system of governance from nothing in a very short period over a territory that is nine or ten times the size of the terrestrial territory of the State. It is as if we took the land mass, which is only one tenth of the size of the total territory of the State, and created from scratch laws to do with everything from waste disposal, traffic management, building regulations, health and safety and so on. That is what they are doing at present. At the same time, they are trying to ensure we can get stuff in the water and working quickly. Much vision and drive is taking place at an official level. We need to start thinking about the 2030s and the 30 GW. We do not need to do it next week but we need to start thinking about it in the future.

On the supply chain and circular economy side of things, it was interesting to watch the dismantling of the Kinsale offshore gas platform recently. First of all, it was built and served its purpose. It is now being dismantled.I would guess it cost approximately €100 million to dismantle it. It is mostly steelwork and it has gone straight back into furnaces to become new steelwork. The good thing from the State's perspective is that the industry that built it paid the €100 million for its dismantling. As far as I am aware, the State did not incur any cost.

The same approach will apply to offshore wind turbines and wave and tidal turbines. The State will have to post a bond from the outset, which will ensure it pays for the recycling of a particular device when it runs out of life. Industry is moving in a recycling direction. At present, and this comes back to one of my earlier themes, we do not have the local industry that can contribute greatly to the various components etc. that go into an offshore turbine or wave device. One exception might be ÉireComposites in County Galway, which makes blades. It is a very advanced plastics company.

To give the Senator an impression of the scale that is achievable given recycling, Siemens is at present building a factory in Le Havre in north-west France just to serve the south North Sea. It is a half mile long and will employ 700 people. It has done more or less the same and rebuilt the port of Hull for the northern part of the North Sea. General Electric, GE, is building a huge plant, again with many jobs, in Teesside and another big one is going into Scotland. Recycling obviously has to play a part in all this but the economic opportunities are huge.

On the issue of marine protected areas, this legislation will be as complex as the Maritime Area Planning Act 2021. We have wonderful wildlife and an underwater environment and we have many people who are aware of what is out there. We need to preserve it and ensure it lives well and in harmony with economic development. I genuinely do not know a great deal beyond that. A very good piece of work was published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage last year on every aspect of marine protected areas. There was a big consultation about it. Our response is up on our website, mria.ie. That will service as the basis for the marine protected area legislation.

On the 1 GW, I do not think it is possible to bring the second auction forward from approximately 2024 or 2025. A huge rigmarole has to be gone through to get there, necessarily and rightly so, under the new legislation. It is truly complex stuff. The system is going as far as it can but the requirement is that there is specific provision in that auction for floating wind and, indeed, a small amount of support for wave in particular in order that we can get pilot devices up and working away.