Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Senator spoke about developer-led versus plan-led and she is right to mention that distinction. Up to now, we have had a developer-led approach for wind farms. It has not led to the creation of any wind farms but just a view that you can apply anywhere and the interest and planning would come from the market. The whole thrust of the legislation this Government has developed has been about moving towards a plan-led approach, in other words, developing these designated marine areas for area plans where a number of wind farms will be developed and connections will go to the mainland and so on. This is based on looking at what works and what has not worked across the rest of Europe. It is with that in mind that progress has been made on the first DMAP in the south east of Ireland by the Minister, Deputy Ryan.

It makes sense, as the Senator said, to have a transfer of functions from housing to the Department that is expert in environment. It makes sense those functions are moved across because it is specifically an environmental area.

The legislation for marine protected areas is in development and will be published soon.

As the Senator knows, we need to do this quickly. She said that we keep saying we need to move quickly on this. We are in situation of war in Europe and war in the Middle East. We have huge pressure on our energy supplies coming into Europe. We need to develop for the sake of our energy independence in Europe and also for the sake of our security. For the sake of the climate, we need to develop our renewable energy resources and do so quickly. We were one of the first countries in Europe to have offshore wind. With our huge resources, it is a pity that no progress was made to develop offshore wind throughout the past decade while it was going on in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It absolutely makes sense that we move ahead on this, learn from the experience of those countries and put in place the best regulation possible to tackle climate change and develop our own energy resources.

We are now heading towards a position where, later this decade, we will be a country that produces more electricity than we consume for the first time. That electricity will be produced in a clean way and we will be exporting. While all this work is going on on the offshore wind side of things, we are developing the interconnector cables that will allow us to sell our electricity abroad when we are in surplus.

All of the DMAPs are subject to environmental assessment, just like all applications to An Bord Pleanála. The teams that are working on offshore renewable energy are collaborating closely with the marine environment team in the Department of housing. Significant resources are being put in place to support environmental assessments and the emphasis for DMAPs is to avoid areas of sensitivity.

We need to make progress as quickly as possible and we need to do it as well as possible. We need to also remember that we are trying to tackle a climate crisis and we need to move with speed.