Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I thank the Deputy for her question. I am pleased that we have, at last, got feed-in tariff approval from Brussels in respect of onshore wind.

The answer to the Deputy's question is that I have not made such an application in respect of offshore wind and it is not my intention to do so at this time. It is not simply that I have made a distinction between onshore and offshore wind generation. There is a manifest distinction. Offshore is at least twice as expensive. I am satisfied, on the best advice available to me, that we can make our targets from the development of onshore capacity, biomass and related technologies.

I do not say the Deputy's information about Northern Ireland is not correct, but it is certainly news to me. We are doing relatively well vis-À-vis any member state of the European Union, let alone Northern Ireland. If one were to develop an 800 MW farm, as the Deputy suggests, it would impose more than €220 million on the cost of the PSO. The Deputy's question concerns the fact that, because we are an island, we are blessed with bountiful resources in the wind area.

The issue is whether we can develop an export capacity in respect of that and whether the development of such an export industry requires a subsidy. I have looked at that issue and, in my view, we have that prospect. There is no example of this in Europe. There is no cross-border intergovernmental agreement for the export of offshore wind. However, I have spoken with my British counterpart on this matter on a number of occasions and I believe it is possible to develop an intergovernmental arrangement for the export of excess energy from here. However, I do not think it would be a good use of scarce resources to provide a subsidy to do that. We can do it without a subsidy.

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