Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have to avoid that. There is huge potential for a ports in particular to benefit from the development of offshore wind. That will be in three types of development. One will be operation and maintenance. That will be a large number of ports right around the coast, with smaller vessels maintaining and operating the turbines. Then there will be deployment ports. They will be the ones where we import the turbines and blades. We need a place to store them, assemble them and ship them. To do that, quayside walls with a depth of something like 11 m and a good berth of 400 m or 500 m in quayside length are needed because these turbines are huge. There are a number of ports. As the Deputy said, it cannot be just Belfast and it cannot just be everything being shipped in from Rotterdam or elsewhere. We are looking at having, and pushing as part of the task force on offshore development to ensure we have, ports in place on the island of Ireland that are able to deploy some of the seven relevant projects that are in the first phase, which will start being deployed from 2026 onwards.

There there is a third development. The Deputy was at that Bechtel launch of the report. The Shannon-Foynes Estuary is an example of where there is port development as a big industrial development opportunity in the construction and fabrication of floating offshore turbines in particular and the storage and deployment of them, but also the use of the power when it comes back onshore, so its huge industrial potential is very real. Our first task is to get the deployment ports ready to deliver the phase 1 projects, and there are a number of ports in the running for that. They have a difficult situation. It is a bit like the chicken and the egg because they will have to make the investment decision prior to contracts being signed, in all likelihood, that is, prior to projects getting through planning permission. Our planning system is uncertain in timelines so there is going to have to be a leap of faith, but that leap will have to be made by a number of ports. I had a meeting with people from one of them yesterday and we are committed to ensuring this is a project that develops our economy and that it is not just that we are using our seabed as a resource but also that we are developing our land ports as economic centres on the back of it. That will be delivered. It has to be.