Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are a lot of questions there. Enterprise Ireland has a stable of about 4,500 companies. The Deputy is right that most of them are focused on export markets and global growth, and that is Enterprise Ireland's remit. We have seen and are seeing Enterprise Ireland develop capacity to support and service this sector. We have a unit within Enterprise Ireland that is focused on this group of about 90 companies that are developing new technologies in supply chain considerations for the scale of investment we referred to at the start of this question. It will be well over €100 billion over the next 25 to 30 years. Many of those companies, while they have the potential to service offshore wind growth in Ireland, will also be doing it outside of Ireland. That is the nature of how Enterprise Ireland works. It builds capacity, skills and know-how in order that technologies that can be applied at home are also transferable abroad.

If you look at some of the dynamic Enterprise Ireland companies that are looking at seabed surveys to choose suitable locations for fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines, for example, companies in that space are relevant to what we need to do here but they are also operating off the UK, in other parts of Europe and in other parts of the world. That is the way we should think. Irish companies should think globally at an early stage and if they can apply that technology to a significant growth sector in Ireland, that is great, but they should also be able to transfer that knowledge to other parts of the world because offshore wind is a global industry that is growing and expanding at pace. Ireland should see itself as a competitive part of that journey. The UK, for example, has ambitious offshore wind targets as well and we should see that as almost being one marketplace. We should do that whether it is in how we manage: the energy that comes on shore; the systems to store energy; seabed surveys; seabird surveys; wave height; or tidal speeds. All of these things can and should apply in Ireland but they should apply internationally as well as a potential export product.

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