Mr. Justin Moran:

The Deputy referred to the rights of people with regard to the planning system. I want to be very clear that people have the right to comment, to object, and to take judicial reviews of projects. I do not believe that anybody should challenge that right, either from an Irish domestic legal perspective or from an EU law perspective. That is certainly not what we are looking for. It is more about resourcing the system in order that it works rapidly and effectively. I will give a concrete example of this. If I want to develop an offshore wind farm, one of the first things I must get is a foreshore licence to carry out environmental surveys. This takes about 18 to 24 months just to get a survey licence to carry out surveys for environmental data and research so that I can use these to put together a planning permission application. The equivalent process in Britain is about 18 to 24 weeks. If I get the foreshore licence, we have already seen situations where those licences have been challenged in judicial reviews. Because of this, there is still a question mark over the validity of the licences that have been issued. From our perspective, as people who are trying to attract others into the Irish wind energy market, when we are trying to say to them that the planning system would be able to respond to the development of 5,000 MW, or perhaps more, of offshore wind energy by 2030, we have people coming back to us and asking if the foreshore licence situation is as challenging and difficult as that, will An Bord Pleanála have the resources necessary to deal with these planning applications? An Bord Pleanála is talking about setting up a specialist unit to look at marine planning. It would have an assistant director of planning and five inspectors. We expect more than five phase 1 projects to launch for planning in a single year. Are those five inspectors sufficient to deal with that level of demand? Before those phase 1 projects are decided, the phase 2 projects will start to launch their planning applications. Are those five inspectors sufficient to deal with all of that? Unless we have that in place to give confidence, not just to developers but also to communities, to the fisheries and to the people who have an interest in wind farm development, then I believe that we will struggle in that regard.

On the supply chain issue, which was raised by Senator Dooley and Deputy Bruton, there was a very good report from the Government - I believe it was in November last year - on skills for a zero carbon economy. One of the report's recommendations was to bring together a high-level implementation group to deliver those recommendations. This cannot be moved forward quickly enough. It is a good report with a lot of solid ideas about technical and engineering jobs, but also jobs for apprentices and people working in coastal communities. That is a real strength we can build on. There was a suggestion to as to which Department could take the lead on this. Maybe it could be discussed with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. It would be interesting to see what the Department's response would be on it.

On supply chain, the focus of our conversation is, rightly, on what we do to develop a domestic supply chain in Ireland. This is very important. It must not be forgotten, however, that there is also an international supply chain. If I want to build a wind farm in 2025, right now I cannot. I would not be able to find the turbines, the installation vessels or the substation installation vessel. They were all booked out. Many of them are booked out to 2026. We need to give confidence to the international supply chain that Irish offshore wind farms are coming. We need to tell them when these are coming so they can go to the turbine manufacturers, the substations and the engineers to say "This is when I need to book you in", and go to the ports to say "This is when I need to book you in for construction services." Giving this confidence to the international supply chain is very important.