Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On that point, one of the witnesses before us last week, Mr. Keating from Shannon Foynes Port, spoke about the 80 GW opportunity as opposed to the 5 GW we are pushing for 2030. He felt strongly that a grid connection should not be a requirement of the offshore procurement process simply because the large international investors do not necessarily want to bring their energy to Ireland - in fact, they do not at all. They want to generate the green hydrogen offshore and then transport it. It seems, therefore, that there are two ways of looking at this. One is satisfying our domestic challenge. At the outset of this series of meetings we were very interested in hearing about the much bigger pan-European or global opportunity that is there. It seems we might need to rethink our offshore wind approach because, especially given the events happening on the other side of Europe at present, there is another crisis as well as the climate crisis on our hands to accelerate this. Can we accelerate that opportunity? Is the regulator thinking about the idea that we need to stop thinking only about 5 GW, even if it is very important, and to start thinking about the much bigger opportunity? The scale of this is vast - I do not pretend for a second that it is not - but the seriousness of the crisis suggests that we should be looking at that. Europe should be looking at how Ireland can help. I do not think we have the capacity to go there ourselves. I am not sure that that message is being communicated to Europe, or I do not get the sense that Europe sees Ireland as an answer to its real and immediate challenge or its medium-term challenge. Does any of the witnesses wish to comment? I am conscious that many others are trying to contribute.