Mr. Brendan Barry:

It is true there is a lot happening in Scotland and there are devices there which are actually in the water and producing megawatts onto the system. The ESB is developing a demonstration project on the west coast of Ireland and this should be ready for 2018, subject to the technology making the right progress over the next couple of years. That will be a small demonstration project but is very important for the industry to take off in Ireland. It is intended to prove that the technology works in the Atlantic environment and will demonstrate to the public the environmental credentials of the devices and their limited impacts, which is very important.

In terms of projects such as the WestWave project, this Bill is very important because those projects do not make any sense to investors like the ESB or other utilities unless they see a bigger commercial market further down the road. This Bill is putting the infrastructure in place to allow that to happen, so we can have visibility of how the marine leasing will be done and know there will be an efficient consenting system. These are very important signals for investors and they mean the demonstration project we are undertaking can happen. A lot is happening at the moment. We are in the planning phase for that project and, as I said, there are devices in Scotland that are currently producing megawatts.