Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. His first question relates to who exactly is on the taskforce. It is our understanding that the taskforce has recently been established and is cross-departmental. It also has inputs from the likes of Enterprise Ireland and others. There is no industry representative on it at the moment. We believe that we can bring the experience to the table. Ms O'Connell and others, are bringing that back to Ireland having spent years in other jurisdictions in developing offshore wind energy and learning through its peaks and troughs. They may have learned lessons in other countries that can help deliver it here.

Earlier, Ms O'Connell mentioned the Offshore Wind Industry Council, which has been established in the UK. It has considerable industry, Government and State buy-in to develop something similar to this. The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council has something similar too. There was a Norwegian delegation in Wexford last week. They also mentioned that there is industry involvement in their establishment. Their partnership is not quite a sector deal, but people are coming together to deliver this. We are asking for the best practices that have been put in place in other jurisdictions to establish global leaders in offshore wind industry-----