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

It is a real challenge. It is a massive investment and a huge change. It is backed up. The key issues include the grid – EirGrid has 350 projects and the ESB has project pipeline of about €10 billion set out - and they are delivering that. They need to do it faster, but that is part of it. The other key constraint or bottleneck potentially is in planning. We have had a real difficulty in the last three years where there were various difficulties in our planning system, which people know about. It was very hard to get projects through the planning system. That has been a real impediment and that has delayed us. The review of the national planning framework will be critical in this regard. Aligned to that is the updating of the regional and county development plans. A lot of counties have not been supportive of the development of renewable power, and we need to update that position.

There are other key changes. We are absolutely confident that we can and will deliver offshore wind projects. That does require investment in our ports. The Port of Cork is one example. We need to make quick decisions on that and other ports so that we have the deployment capability. I believe we can do that. Again, we need to get it through the planning system. That will start this spring or early summer when we expect the planning applications to go in.

There are uncertainties, but we are deploying everything in the State to deliver it because it is good for people, the economy and for the climate.

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