Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Mr. McGarry on his appointment. What a waste of time it is to bring a man of his experience to a hearing before a committee that has absolutely no oversight over his appointment. If we did not like the cut of his jib, it would matter not a jot. Mr. McGarry would be free to walk out the door there with a smile on his face. As the chairman of Shannon Foynes Port Company, Mr. McGarry is a lucky man. It is a tremendous port and I am familiar with the work and development that have taken place in the Shannon Foynes area. The bull has been grabbed by the horns and things have been driven forward. I see huge potential for the area in the future in developing wind energy and hydrogen production. There is a small issue with the storage of hydrogen if we start to develop hydrogen off the west coast. I have a vision, shared by many of my friends in the German Parliament, that we would have ships coming into the Foynes area and along the coast to Kerry, with undersea caverns used to store liquid hydrogen. As one German friend put it to me recently, Ireland could be the next Saudi Arabia from an energy perspective. Foynes has always been very independent. People in the area have always driven forward with their own vision. Does Mr. McGarry see the company expanding out of the harbour area into the energy sector in the near future?