Ms Laura Brien:

It might be worth clarifying that the Government adopted the plan-led approach for offshore wind development in 2023. This approach provided that, whereas the first six projects, which were primarily located on the east coast with one on the west coast, were chosen by the developers, all future development, rather than being developer-led, would take place on the basis of a plan-led approach. The first outworking of that plan-led approach was the south coast DMAP, with four sites designated. The next piece of that plan-led approach is the national DMAP, which will identify further sites which have been characterised as good for development around the rest of the country.

That will by definition include Donegal. The drivers of those locations are a combination of things. As Captain McCabe said, it is a data-driven approach. This is a role that the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment will carry out. It will look at patterns of use for other things, whether it is MPAs and specific conservation objectives, navigation or fishing usages. When all of these usages are identified, good marine and spatial planning will show what areas can be assigned for offshore wind development. One of the things that will feed into that, as Mr Kelly said, is the availability of grid to take the electricity ashore.

The other important aspect to note is that it generally takes between eight and ten years to identify the sites, allocate the right to occupy the site for an activity, get the wind farm built and energised and then have the electricity come ashore. The indication is that having the longer term national DMAP in place means that other organisations and other agencies can then do the planning to match up the grid development with the areas where offshore wind is likely to be developed in the future.