Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
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10. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the benefits he envisages for north County Kerry arising from the recent off-shore wind energy project announcement in County Clare; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20885/21]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Programme for Government commits to the achievement of 5GW of offshore wind by 2030 and the development of a longer-term plan to potentially take advantage of up to 30GW of offshore floating wind power in our deeper Atlantic waters.

These targets entail very large capital investments with the potential for a large number of long-term, high-value jobs in the installation and maintenance of wind farm assets and associated infrastructure and services. The development of offshore wind farms will offer a significant new business opportunity for large ports, for turbine assembly and deployment, and smaller ports, for operation and maintenance services.

Additionally, in the short-to-medium term, offshore wind projects are expected to be supported via the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS). A requirement of this scheme is for supported projects to establish Community Benefit Funds prior to project operation and for specified contributions to be made to these funds. Owing to the larger scale of offshore wind developments, these contributions are similarly expected to be significantly larger than those of onshore projects.