Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The primary function of State ports is to facilitate maritime transport, which is the most important means of connecting Ireland to international markets, accounting for more than 90% of Ireland's international trade, in volume terms. At the same time, it is recognised that there is a pressing need for Ireland to have the port capacity in place to exploit the opportunities presented by offshore renewable energy, ORE, with the programme for Government targeting a capacity of 5 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030.

The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, met with Iarnród Éireann on 1 December 2020 and it outlined the potential for Rosslare Port to service the emerging offshore wind sector in Ireland and the scale of the investment in infrastructure needed depending on a number of options. Rosslare is unique among the State-owned ports, as it is not a commercial company operating under the Harbours Acts but is instead operated on a commercial basis as a division of Iarnród Éireann with all investments funded from port revenues. This is similar to other ports in Ireland which receive no Exchequer funding and must fund all their infrastructure developments through their own resources, borrowing or through EU grant funding. Some of these ports are also examining the business potential of ORE.

At my request, officials have commenced an assessment of options for the facilitation of ORE by the ports, including possible funding under the European recovery and resilience facility. However, it was decided this would not be one of the projects going forward to Europe as part of Ireland's national recovery and resilience plan due to prioritisation of other more mature projects that are in line with EU timelines to maximise Ireland's overall funding.

My Department is continuing to explore whether there is any other funding available to assist with the provision of ORE facilities at ports. In particular, officials are currently engaging with the European Commission seeking changes to the Connecting Europe Facility, CEF, criteria to allow EU funding of port infrastructure for ORE in the next funding stream for 2021-2023 and also in an effort to influence the next trans-European network for transport, TEN-T, regulation so that green infrastructure projects will be included.

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