Mr. Mark Griffin:

There are a few aspects to this. There is a substantial budget within the Department to fund energy research. One of the areas we flagged up in my opening statement was the extent to which there was an underspend during the course of 2013. We have to accept that some of the energy research programmes, particularly the offshore energy research for which we flagged the underspend in 2013, are at a very early stage. We completed an offshore renewable energy development plan in 2014 and that sets out very ambitious targets for research in the sector. In terms of the State's territory, its offshore, water area is about ten times the size of its landmass footprint. Technology such as wave and tidal energy are still at the research, development and demonstration stage globally. Realistically, in terms of the commercial application of those technologies we are probably looking several years down the road.