Mr. Mark Griffin:

The principal partners in driving forward the energy research programmes are the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, which is an agency under our Department, the Marine Institute in Galway, and the IMERC in Cork, which is connected to the Tyndall institute. There is a collaboration between Government agencies in terms of the SEAI and the Marine Institute, universities which have technical and research capacity and expertise to bring to bear, and the private sector whose principal motivation is to advance the technologies to a commercial stage. That work is ongoing. For example, the IMERC is a partnership between University College Cork, UCC, Cork Institute of Technology and the Irish Naval Service. Therefore, a range of very competent partners are being funded through an EU programme for research in third level institutions and they are also being funded by way of a grant of €3 million from my Department over the 2012 to 2015 period. Aside from the ocean energy research side, there is also a very successful energy research programme in University College Dublin, UCD. The research end is well funded. While we can never have enough funding for research, we are committing funding of €26.3 million over the 2013 to 2016 period. We are in discussions with other Departments seeking to secure an additional €30 million in funding for research in the ocean energy area.