Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am not being facetious. I appreciate that the Minister has a deep knowledge of Cork. Extrapolating from the Minister’s response, it seems that the Minister wants to sequence this. The Minister also spoke about resources and deploying resources to the effort around all of this. I perceive that there is not the requisite number of personnel for the effort that is required across the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, the statutory bodies and within Government Departments. Respectfully through the Chair, I would suggest that if there was an increase in the number of staff, for instance, to be deployed on this effort because it is such a massive opportunity for this island, that would go a long way towards dealing with possibly allowing for a greater throughput of licences and consents to be issued and so on. I respectfully suggest that Government is not deploying enough people through its agencies and Departments to this effort.

There are too many constraints such that it forces the Minister to be perhaps less ambitious in what he seeks to achieve. If the Minister had more people and bodies put to this effort, we could potentially be much further down the road. In other words, if I were the Minister now, I would be going to the Department of Public Expenditure, NPD Delivery and Reform saying that I need to double or treble the team because this is about Ireland incorporated, future energy and security of energy supply. I would say that I want more people for this effort and I want sanction for that. That is what I would be suggesting, respectfully. Correct me if I am wrong.