Ms Marie T. Bourke:

I welcome the opportunity to outline to members the actions and initiatives the Department and Enterprise Ireland are engaged in with businesses to support the development of Ireland’s offshore wind resource. I am joined by Mr. Christal and Mr. Curran of Enterprise Ireland, while Dr. Alan Power is joining the meeting online. Dr. Power is also part of the secretariat to the expert group on future skills needs.

Wind energy will be critical in enabling our transition to a low-carbon economy. Meeting our national climate targets will require a significant increase in the deployment rates of renewable electricity, including offshore wind, compared with those achieved in recent years. The development of offshore wind energy will bring significant economic and employment opportunities to Ireland. The Department and its development agencies are active in further developing these supply chain activities. I will briefly address three of these activities relevant to the deliberations of the committee. These are: Enterprise Ireland’s activities in developing SME capability in offshore wind supply chains; research by the expert group on future skills needs to identify the future skills requirements for the offshore wind sector; and regional developments, including the regional enterprise plans and the Shannon Estuary economic task force.

Enterprise Ireland has been working with SMEs to develop their capability in the offshore wind sector. It has developed an offshore wind supply chain cluster of 65 companies. These companies provide a range of products, services and skill sets appropriate to the offshore wind industry. As per its remit, Enterprise Ireland is primarily focused on helping Irish SMEs bring this capability to export markets. By far the largest and easiest to access market opportunity is the UK. The London office of Enterprise Ireland has been building connections between Irish SMEs and UK offshore wind project developers, original equipment manufacturers and tier 1 contractors to ensure the greatest possible penetration of the UK market. By facilitating Irish SMEs entering the UK offshore wind industry, Enterprise Ireland is helping these companies to build the appropriate capability and offerings to industry that not only operate in the UK and globally, but are also going to be major stakeholders in the Irish offshore wind sector. Securing reference sites in Ireland will be advantageous for these supply chains as these companies seek to win business internationally.

Enterprise Ireland has organised several sector events in the past three years in the UK, including a market study visit to Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth on the east coast of England, an event to showcase Irish capability to Dutch tier 1 contractors and a showcase of Irish capability to the Norwegian energy company Equinor. It also commissioned a scoping study for Irish SMEs, focusing on supply chain opportunities in the UK, Denmark and Norway. Enterprise Ireland is currently planning an industry forum to be held in Croke Park in June to focus on export market opportunities, particularly in the UK market, as well as opportunities for the supply chain domestically.

A further event in Manchester is planned in late June, where EI will take the Irish pavilion to Global Offshore Wind, an industry trade show.

From a skills policy and employment perspective, the Department is committed to identifying and driving the delivery of skills required to deliver on the ambitious wind energy targets. The expert group on future skills needs, the secretariat of which sits in our Department, has published its study on skills to enable the low-carbon economy to 2030. As part of this study, the expert group examined the skills needs arising from offshore wind energy generation targets in the 2019 climate action plan. It estimated the demand for labour associated with offshore wind development will increase from the low hundreds to 2,500 mid-decade and will fluctuate around this level to 2030. The group's modelling was based on the five phases of offshore wind energy, namely, planning, development, installation and operations through to decommissioning. Across these phases, the expert group identified a range of skills that are required in engineering, environmental science and humanities, construction and technical services, legal and professional services, transport and logistics, and emerging and niche occupations. As well as ongoing industry engagement with Ireland's skills development system, the report recommended the establishment of training partnerships or responses for projects between the Government, industry and education and training providers.

The offshore wind industry has significant regional employment and the Department is involved in the development and launch of nine new regional enterprise plans to 2024. In developing these, the steering committees in each region considered how to contribute to a carbon-neutral economy. Some of the regional enterprise plans contain specific strategic objectives of relevance to the offshore renewable wind and supply chain. For example, the mid-west regional enterprise plan aims to harness the potential for major offshore floating wind projects off the west coast and to bring users of renewable energy physically close to the energy source. The west regional enterprise plan specifically targets the region's potential for enterprise and job creation in the renewable energy sector. It includes a focus on the potential of green hydrogen in decarbonising industry. The region will work with large energy users to demonstrate the demand for this form of energy. The north-west plan targets the growth of the wind energy industry by diversifying its existing onshore wind industry into the offshore wind industry.

The Shannon Estuary task force is being established in response to a commitment in the programme for Government. Given the Shannon Estuary’s deepwater port and geographical position, it is expected to assess the potential for renewable energy projects. Existing infrastructure such as Shannon Foynes Port and the Tarbert and Moneypoint power stations will be key to harnessing that potential. Several renewable energy projects that either have been proposed or are in planning illustrate the region's potential to complete its transition to a renewable-based economy, and these are expected to inform the work of the task force.

Achieving the full potential of Ireland's offshore wind resource offers major opportunities for the development of offshore wind electricity and associated by-products such as hydrogen, ammonia, energy storage and transmission technologies and technology services. Large international investors are engaged with indigenous companies in a range of joint ventures to progress some of these business opportunities. The Department and its agencies are actively engaged in building capacity in the indigenous sector for these supply chain opportunities.

I thank members for their attention. My colleagues and I will be happy to answer any questions they may have.