Mr. Jack McDermot:

On the local content percentage, we looked at that and took advice from Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. We also studied Taiwan as a case study early in the development of the strategy. All that advice and research pointed to the idea that you should not slap a percentage on. Taiwan did it. Taiwan made a good start in offshore wind and enabling supply chain. Then they introduced a quite high percentage of local content required. I understand that is when their plans dipped a bit in velocity.

We would not plan to introduce a percentage but would more try to build up supply chain capability via Enterprise Ireland initiatives in, for example, operations and maintenance of offshore wind. I understand there is a lot of potential for tech expertise in Ireland to be grafted on to offshore wind, which would mean not necessarily having a boat with a crew going out to a turbine to maintain it. It might be possible to pre-empt some maintenance issues.

There is an opportunity for us to develop a supply chain in floating offshore wind. There are opportunities relating to the Internet of things, grid technology and every challenge around the grid. We see opportunities around cabling for supply chain for grid. More broadly, there is a long tail of supply chain opportunities that we call out in the strategy: surveying; controls and implementation; electrical engineering; marine and mechanical engineering; haulage and transportation on land and at sea; project management, which many Irish companies are already specialised in; repairs; insurance; and vessels.

When I was in Killybegs the other week, there was a huge pelagic fishing vessel operator there. It seemed to be open to the idea that while it uses big boats to fish today, it could operate large boats for the maintenance or construction of offshore wind facilities tomorrow. Another company, which specialises in building crew-transfer vessels – smaller types of vessels that could potentially be produced in large quantities – had already got its first manufactured crew-transfer vessel almost ready to be delivered to the customer. These are some examples of the sectors we would love to build up quite fast within the supply chain.