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

I do not have the exact detail on the timeline, but I expect it in the coming months. Very shortly, we will set out the designated area and that will be followed by a further auction next year and the year after.

Next year will be the next auction. It is to design them on a rolling, regular basis so that it gives certainty to industry and that we meet the 5 GW targets. What I should have mentioned in my opening response also is a further target of some 2 GW which we are looking to convert from power to energy, without being completely specific in terms of what that exact mechanism might be, to look for industry to come back with innovative proposals, be they for hydrogen, ammonia, energy storage, clever ways of managing curtailment or other energy systems management effected through the use of offshore wind in that light. The next phase has to get us back up to that 5 GW. The four projects in the Irish Sea, if memory serves me, make roughly 4 GW of power. We need to fulfil our immediate target but we do not stop there. We are going towards 30 GW and, in my mind, 70 GW if we really think big and long term, going out into the Atlantic and southern waters. It is the path to that scale of development that we need to get right so we have certainty and predictability. Investment will come when we are not stop-start and when it is just part of a regular, routine process of expansion.

See this speech in context