Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have had a lot of discussion on Powering Prosperity to date and I welcome the Dáil’s interest in it. I acknowledge the Deputy’s work in this space through the joint Oireachtas committee. In terms of infrastructure, that is obviously a matter for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, but we will continue to work closely with it to ensure that infrastructure is in place. Powering Prosperity is focused on ensuring that we maximise the opportunities that are available to Irish businesses, whether small, medium or large, and maximise the opportunities available to the regions in particular.

In our Department, we are working very closely with the agencies and companies. We have just finished a joint event with Scotland, which the Minister, Deputy Burke, hosted in Cork on 12 and 13 June. We had officials and Ministers of the Scottish Government, including Scotland's Minister for Climate Action, looking to work and co-operate with us based on their successes to date, and with them also looking at our successes, particularly with regard to onshore.

We have 40 actions to be implemented this year and next year through the Powering Prosperity plan and they are all on schedule and on target. As we said earlier, we are focused on getting a testbed established off the west coast to see if we can get that technology suited and developed to ensure we maximise the offshore opportunities that are provided on the west coast.

I am very aware of the concerns around infrastructure. As I committed earlier to Deputy O'Rourke, I will come back with an update on the infrastructure position and I will include Deputy Stanton in that correspondence.

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