Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is interesting that the Deputy mentioned Limerick. I was reading The Irish Timesa couple of weeks ago, and while I cannot recall which supplement it was, it was on this subject. I turned the page and there was a full-page advert, I presume from Limerick County Council, stating that Limerick was going to go green and this was the future for the county. I must admit I was nodding. I think it is the future for the city and the county.

If we think about it strategically and long term, we have world-class manufacturing capability in the people of Limerick. They are brilliant. I recall years ago visiting the Johnson & Johnson Vistakon plant in Limerick, which continued manufacturing there when that should have been moved to China decades before, because the people were just bloody good at working together to change the production line and keep advancing. Moreover, we potentially have world-class comparative and competitive advantage because the north west and west of Ireland is one of the windiest places on the planet, and offshore wind seems to be one of the scaled renewable technologies that will be delivered. We have large-scale access to water, which is one of the other constraints that there will be in a climate-changing world. Many countries will have difficulty sourcing water, but we have the River Shannon. If we put that together - power, water, grid, people - we should see this as the economic future of the region.

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