Simon Harris

So we did see in the month of March a very significant amount of our electricity output being fuelled by wind.

So that has been one very strong benefit that we've made, I think up to half, 49 point something percent as well.

And customers, consumers, citizens are seeing the benefit in relation to that.

On the issue more broadly of offshore wind and the likes, I think this comes back to

the work that my colleague Jack Chambers is doing around critical infrastructure.

We have to, we are going to have to, and I live in a constituency, I live in a coastal constituency that will be very significantly impacted by this.

So I say this, this is the antidote to nimbyism.

We are going to have to, I think, look through critical infrastructure and emergency powers if needed.

as to how we can accelerate the development of offshore wind.

I was at a European meeting recently.

They were saying it takes about eight months in China to deliver wind energy, and it takes about eight years in Europe.

Now, obviously, there needs to be some gap for democracy, and that matters, but it's not the totality of the gap.

There's still real permitting issues.

There's still delays.

One of the priorities I want to see during the Irish presidency of the European Union is how Europe can actually lax some of the permitting rules in this space as well.

On the issue of data centers, I mean,

We've got to be careful here because there's two sides to this.

Yes, on the one level, the data centres are absorbing a significant amount of our energy, that's true.

On another level, they're also a significant contributor to the activity that they're producing directly or indirectly to our tax base in the country too.

And therefore, I think we have to continue to work with industry in terms of how we can move more of the data centres to renewables and increase the obligations on them in terms of their own energy supplies.