Mr. Pat Keating:

From our perspective, we obviously have our master plan. We have developed that and updated it, in conjunction with the Department of Transport. In some respects, we have gone ahead of the national policy in that we are assuming national policy will catch up. By the time we get to a formal planning application with An Bord Pleanála, it will be early 2025. We can do a lot of the preplanning work now on the assumption that national policy catches up. In parallel, we are engaging, via the Department of Transport, with the other Departments. There is also a new grouping called the Shannon Estuary economic task force out there, which is going to be launched shortly. Again, it has highlighted the offshore renewable opportunity, and that is looking at co-ordinating this approach across the State sector. That co-ordination is absolutely required, and while we are talking about ports, the other big enabling infrastructure here is offshore grid infrastructure. As all the pieces need to fit into place, there has to be a high level of co-ordination.

There is a task force within the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and an interdepartmental task force co-ordinating as well. Underneath that sits the ports co-ordination group as well. From the outset, there is a kind of sequenced approach in which the focus appears to be on the fixed type initially before moving to floating. Our fear with that is that we are going to miss the boat and drop the ball in a competitive international environment, where countries get a step ahead. Given the resources that are required for this, and the fact that the scale of this is absolutely huge, capital resources are scarce and supply chain resources, as we have all seen, are even tighter. First mover advantage is important for this.