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

Cork will be the centre of it. The question is about getting it right. We will do what we did onshore. We said we would do a series of auctions onshore. We have rolled out each auction and will do another this year. That step-by-step approach works and gives the best certainty, rather than promising we will do everything at once, which is not feasible. First, we do not have the resources; secondly, Cork Harbour is not ready; and third, we learn as we go and we prove we can build up the resources. Doing everything in sequence is not doing it slowly. This is not a small project. It will be huge. There is an auction this year, which we are already doing, and the year after. We have to get the consents and the environmental mapping and planning correct as part of that. The biggest challenge we have is probably in An Bord Pleanála and MARA.

The biggest challenge is that the same planning expertise and marine biologists we might want to employ in An Bord Pleanála are probably working in some of the companies in Cork the Deputy mentioned. That is not a bad thing, but it is a reality and a real constraint. Doing it in a sequenced way where we get the environmental planning right is the best and right way to do it. We have all hands on deck and are at action stations now, in the Shannon Estuary, in Cork, on the east coast and even farther afield.

At the meeting I attended at the Alex Hotel, it was interesting the number of people there from Mayo and Donegal, and there were people there from Scotland, Wales and Sweden as well. The big prize is in the west and north west in terms of where the heavy winds are and the deep waters are out far. That can be serviced from Cork and much of the power can come back into Cork. This is absolutely central to our climate plans.

It is not the only issue. We also have to deliver 5 GW of solar, another 4 GW of wind, plus a whole lot of pump storage and also grid development on shore to make it work. As we know, investing in our electricity grid has not been popular in this country in the past ten years. EirGrid did a good job. It got the Celtic interconnector into Cork without a single objection, if I recall correctly, in the planning system. That was a remarkable achievement. We have to build it now. When we build that interconnector in, that is all the more the signal that Cork is where it will go.