Ms Vanessa O'Connell:

Inis Offshore Wind is an Irish company. We were formed over two years ago by the Temporis Aurora fund. One of our key investors is the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. The core purpose of Inis Offshore Wind is to develop offshore wind in Ireland for the people of Ireland. The Irish people have a direct stake in our success through our backers but as a company we are also committed to ensuring the benefits of offshore wind come to the people of Ireland. I worked in the UK for ten years and I have the experience of seeing the growth of an industry. It was exciting to be there and I had a great career, but there was always something calling me back to Ireland. It is so windy in Ireland, and we have huge opportunities here. Now I have the opportunity to head up a company that is looking to do that. I am personally very vested in what we are doing.

Specifically, we are a developer. We have five projects all around the coast of Ireland and are looking at another project with a capacity of up to 4 GW. We have two projects in the east, one in the south and two in the west. Our interest is in the potential in all of Ireland. We want all parts of Ireland to develop from a supply chain perspective. It is not just about the jobs. If we think about the interest of a developer, having a local supply chain makes sense from a cost perspective but also from a resilience perspective. We talked about the global challenges in the supply chain. I had the same conversations as Mr. Cunniffe at the Enterprise Ireland event last week. Everyone was talking about the global challenges in the supply chain and the market. Ireland is a new market. We need to work together to attract the supply chain and tell people Ireland is open for business. We have this vision and the targets but there is more we can do to show we are really open for business and are going to deliver. That will help the supply chain come. It is important that we develop Irish companies but as Mr. Ivers was saying, we also need foreign direct investment and to make sure that when companies do invest, it is long-term investment that creates jobs here for the long term. We have our projects and we are in the early development phases. We are looking to get foreshore licences in order that we can go out and survey the seabed, but, ultimately, we have a long pipeline to deliver projects up to 2030 and beyond.