Mr. Niall Goodwin:

I thank the Chair. I will address the questions Deputy Ó Broin posed. On the first question about the expert committee and industry and NGO involvement, it is a good question as to whether it is better to have purely independent, scientific experts. Where we are coming from with this is that it is not just industry we would like on this expert group. It would be useful to have and we would like the involvement of environmental NGOs, the fishing community and other sea users. We say that because of the kind of experience both here and in other jurisdictions. In our case from an industry perspective, there is a good deal of expertise from what has been done elsewhere, for example, in the North Sea, and what is being done now in the Baltic Sea where good practice is being put in place. There were lessons learned, for good and for bad, that we might be able to bring to the process here. Having industry at the table would enable us to do that. Likewise, having environmental NGOs at the table enables them to bring in their significant expertise on this. We often discuss the role of the fishers. We see the fishers as knowing the sea better than anybody. Often when we talk to developers, they see that in their engagement with the fishing community. These are the people who know what it is like out there. They know what the conditions are like. That kind of expertise would be extremely useful for such an expert committee.

Ireland is at the very early stages of the process of getting towards our offshore targets. We have a single offshore wind farm off the coast of Wicklow, SSE’s Arklow Bank. We did not kick on after that and develop at the pace and scale they did in such places as Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. Whether we should or should not have, that does give us an opportunity to learn and bring in that sort of experience. This goes across auction design, when we decide how we are going to support these projects. It goes across how EirGrid, for example, is going to develop consent and then develop our offshore network, as it will now be tasked with doing somewhat up to 2030. However, post 2030, our TSO EirGrid will be in the lead in planning out what our offshore network looks like. Being able to bring in expertise from overseas where that has been done successfully already can only benefit such an expert group. I would add the caveat, however, that that would need to come with the highest levels of transparency. We need to be very clear about the clearly defined roles that each of these stakeholders will bring to such a group. That is paramount. The ability to get that expertise into the room is where our suggestion comes from.