Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

Nuclear energy is dirty power and is on the way out in other areas, and I, like most citizens, would be happy if it never saw the light of day here. We are not focusing on where our potential might lie by even entertaining it or putting it on the list. Renewable energy creates massively more jobs per unit of energy than fossil fuels. We have examples, as I said, in Germany and in Scotland. Scotland has very similar geographic conditions to Ireland and a similar population. In 2013 there were 12,000 people employed in renewable energy there. I do not know what the figure is in Ireland, but it is roughly a couple of hundred in wind and wave, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 nationally. We could be really developing our offshore wave potential. Small businesses and big businesses are not capable of delivering. The Minister's Department would fund a broad range of small developments in wave power. At the technical readiness level, they are all scoring one, two or maybe three on a nine-point scale. Small operators cannot take it to the stage at which this type of protocol could be developed, even though the potential may be there. We need to do something a lot bigger than we may have considered before.

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