Mr. Mark Griffin:

The Senator is on a roll. I will answer some of the questions and ask colleagues to join in. On the first point, on the role of the committee in the development of the national energy and climate action plan, it is very clearly stitched into the terms of reference that it has an important role. It all depends on the timing of the committee's report. There will clearly be views expressed based on what the members have heard and their opinions on potentially new measures that might be inserted into the plan or matters that absolutely need to be considered. The suite of hearings the committee has already had, and those to come, will place members in a strong position to offer opinions on many points that might feature in the action plan. Maybe it will be the report itself that we will consider as part of an input to the national energy and climate action plan because it constitutes a de facto consultation.

On the Senator's point on offshore energy, I apologise to the Chairman because she also raised it in her opening remarks. Will offshore wind play a role? The short answer is that it will. It is more complicated to determine when. We prepared an offshore renewable energy development plan in 2014. It set out that there was potential for approximately 4,500 MW of offshore wind energy and approximately 1,500 MW of wave and tidal energy. Wave and tidal energy is further down the road and requires a significant amount of further research and development, some of which we are funding in the Department.

The offshore energy technologies are well developed. Mr. Manley had an opportunity in recent weeks to visit a fixed offshore wind energy scheme being run by SSE in Wick, off the coast of Scotland in the far north. Statoil has six demonstration turbines, using floating technology. One of the challenges we face when looking at the next renewable energy strategy is the trade-off between what constitutes the most cost-effective technology and developing a diverse pool. We will need to achieve the latter. It is clear from the figures that onshore wind generation is still the cheapest. When one looks at the costs per megawatt hour in 2017, one sees that the figure for large onshore wind is about €89. The large offshore wind figure is about €129. Therefore, we have to balance the need to diversify the portfolio with the impact on the consumer. We expect that, over a relatively small number of years, the costs will come down. We have been seeing very substantial reductions in the cost of solar in the past few years. We believe offshore wind generation is likely to form a considerable component of the renewable energy portfolio, perhaps in five, ten or 15 years. As the Deputy said, there is great potential. Ireland has 900,000 sq. km offshore, which is ten times the size of our island land mass. There is massive potential in this regard. All of these factors are knitted in. It is unfortunate that EirGrid representatives are not with us today. Having significant levels of offshore wind energy generation probably requires a fairly fundamental redesign of the grid. Do we run it across the country? Do we run it offshore? Are we to generate offshore wind energy solely for our own consumption or should we be looking to export? What does that mean in terms of the volume of offshore wind energy one would want to bring into the system? How should the grid be structured to sell the energy to other administrations?

With regard to the cost of community energy and access, I will ask Mr. Manley to answer. Our colleagues in the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland might have views on the issue also.

I will ask the ESB representatives to talk about Moneypoint because it is clearly doing a lot of work on that issue.

A review of the emission trading system, ETS, was undertaken as part of the climate suite over the past year or 18 months. That review has been completed. It has done a number of things and I will ask Mr. Maughan to come in on that. Maybe Mr. Manley could answer first, then Mr. Maughan and then the ESB can talk about Moneypoint.