Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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We are not in a bad place in the sense that the companies we have got through the auction are serious about investing here. We will deliver on this. The question is time, and time is important. That largely relies on the planning process. I attended a meeting of the North Seas Energy Cooperation in the Hague the week before last. It is very good to share notes with colleagues who are doing the same thing. Antonella Battaglini of the Renewables Grid Initiative presented at the meeting and made the valid point that good environmental planning is the key thing to get right, involving stakeholders, local communities and environmental NGOs. The best way one can accelerate projects is if the State delivers a lot of the background environmental data one needs to get through the planning process and make sure the environment is not being hindered. This is a real challenge in other countries and we need to learn from what they have done.

From the State's perspective, we must ask what the key thing is we need to do. We need to provide the skills within the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, and the marine environment planning unit with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in order that they can deliver. It will not just be them. Our own Department has a key role. We have been using INFOMAR within our Department to measure the seabed over the past 12 years. I see that evolving to where we will not just be providing data on the seabed but the ecology, habitat, substructure and so on in order that the developers can use this. Remember that we have an underlying advantage here because the resource is stronger. We have a very windy location. If we get the environmental planning right, we will see the industry develop here. That combined with getting the transfer of power through interconnectors and devising the industrial policy for how we use the power will see us really succeeding. It is the environmental standards and data and delivering that from the State. This, again, is the reason we go towards a State-led approach rather than a development-led approach. There is much turbulence as we switch from one to the other. It is that environmental data, however. I was asked what the key thing is at a meeting subsequent to the North Seas Countries' Offshore Grid Initiative meeting in Europe last week. Environmental planning is the key thing for us to get right.