Mr. Justin Moran:

The port co-ordination group was set up by the Department of Transport. It brings together parts of that Department, the Irish Maritime Development Office, IMDO, and a number of ports. We include a number of Irish ports among our membership. The group is concerned with trying to find ways of building port infrastructure and readiness for offshore renewable energy and is a good initiative. The challenge is that it is our members that are developers rather than our members that are ports that will be setting out the specifications for what they would like to see in a port, for example, pier length and water depth. There is something that we can bring to the table in terms of discussing our needs and readiness, which is one of the reasons that we commissioned the report that Mr. Cunniffe mentioned in his opening statement. In that all-island report, we identified 13 ports north and south of the Border and investigated what port infrastructure existed right now to construct and marshal an offshore wind farm. It also considered what could be in place in two or three years' time if ports like Rosslare and Shannon Foynes delivered on their infrastructural development plans. We have been happy to support those plans in terms of their applications to the Connecting Europe Facility. I hope that, when we bring the report to members of this committee, we will have a much clearer understanding of what is in place and what needs to be in place. Fixed-bottom and floating requirements are a little different, so we need to prepare not just for what can be done today, but what can be done in the late 2020s and 2030s. When we finish the report, we hope that it will be taken seriously by the Department and will inform the thinking of the Department and members of this committee.