Mr. Peter Coyle:

I totally agree with the Senator and with my colleagues in Wind Energy Ireland. There is a lot of expertise in some of our NGOs, such as BirdWatch Ireland and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, which are two I have dealt with.

They should be properly resourced and able to contribute to the debate in a meaningful way.

On the issue raised by Deputy Devlin, the waters of the Irish Sea are shallow. There is also the small fact that the line of the exclusive economic zone is quite close to the coast and there will be MPAs in the Irish Sea, so our capacity to get 5 GW out of the Irish Sea is relatively low. As such, we are going to need floating offshore wind energy generation immediately. We will need it in the Celtic Sea and in the Atlantic. We need to include it in this. Our big ask of the system at the moment is to have that in ORESS 2 because if it is not, our targets and everything else will be shot out of the water.