Mr. Pat Keating:

I will address the Senator's first question and then hand over to Mr. Hallissey to deal with the question on rail freight. As regards our intentions for the marshalling facility to 2028, that is stage 1, if you like. As I stated, the scale of this is so large that it will require a multi-site approach. The ESB has the Moneypoint site, so there is potential to have two deepwater facilities ready and available on the Shannon Estuary by 2030. For the full 80 GW realisation, however, which is in the medium and long term, two will not be enough. We do have several other sites on the estuary that we are considering.

As regards the Senator's question in respect of speed, she is spot on. Investors need certainty. We need a pipeline. The lead times for this infrastructure on the port side but also on the wind farms side are seven to ten years. That is the type of window we need. That is why the ask today is to bring floating offshore wind front and centre of the stage right now. We cannot leave it until 2030. If we do so, we will not be ready to invest until 2038 or thereabouts because, as members are aware, the way it works is that when we go to fund our infrastructures, our funders will seek certainty. If there are no options for megawatts or gigawatts on Atlantic floating offshore wind generation, there will no demand even though we have the resource. That is why it is critical that the pace for floating offshore wind has to move up. As we pointed out, that 10 GW needs to be now put in for floating offshore wind to give certainty to the sector to be able to plan against. At the moment, there is nothing there, so even though there is potential for 80 GW, there is no process to engage the market. That is why it is critical to speed up in the context of floating offshore wind generation. We kind of need to ditch the 2030 target of 5 GW. It is a local demand but this is a pan-European play and, in our view, it is not being considered in the right way. It is a bit like the tail wagging the dog. The big resource here is 80 GW, not 5 GW. What do we need to do to unlock 80 GW? We need to get floating offshore wind generation off the ground and facilitate it. The market is more than willing, as we have seen in Scotland where it is totally oversubscribed. As a country, we need to catch up with the market, set the stage and allow the market to engage with our system. We agree that is the right approach; the problem is the pace of the roll-out. That may answer the first part of the Senator's question.