Mr. Niall Goodwin:

Senator McGahon's point is a very good one. I do not disagree. It is a big opportunity for Ireland. The agreement on TEN-E was reached in December, just before the end of the year. It was a very ambitious agreement that was reached between the co-legislators and there is a clear ambition at EU level to capitalise on the resources we have offshore, especially in north-western Europe. Ireland is called out as an area of massive potential. That feeds in as well to the ongoing discussion as part of the Fit for 55 package on the revision of the renewable energy directive which also looks at increasing co-operation at sea basin level to make sure that we can capitalise on the renewables we have offshore as a follow up to the offshore renewable energy, ORE, strategy that we saw in late 2020. Ireland is called out as a key part of the process across all those types of policy initiatives at EU level.

It is also worth noting that this is a particularly opportune time for Ireland given that we currently hold the presidency of the North Seas Energy Cooperation or NSEC group. This is something the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is prioritising and doing a lot of positive work on, but ultimately Ireland can only be a beneficiary of this sort of regional co-operation to start with and then move towards co-operation at a pan-European level. That is because we have the resource and we have talked about the potential offshore for 30 GW off the west coast and the south coast in particular for floating offshore wind. If we were to use the TEN-E regulation and start to make these infrastructural investments now to connect up European grids, and allow renewable electricity flow from where the resource is best - that is Ireland to where the demand centres are - for example, the Irish-German Hydrogen Council is present here, and the demand centres in central Europe where we have a lot of heavy industry. We have spoken a lot about hydrogen, and it will be a carrier to get renewables from the Irish coast over to demand centres, but there will also be interconnection. The idea of a pan-European super grid is something we should be looking at and seeing where there is funding available.

To go back to the specifics of Senator McGahon's question, there is money to avail of in TEN-E and we should be seeking to identify projects that could unlock potential. Interconnection is a great example of that, to enable us to sell electricity to the rest of Europe.