Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Powering Prosperity

Powering Prosperity – Ireland’s Offshore Wind Industrial Strategy, the first strategy of its kind for Ireland, aims to build a successful, vibrant and impactful offshore wind energy industry in Ireland.

This will ensure that the sector creates as much value as possible throughout Ireland and maximises the economic benefits associated with government ambitions to deliver its 2030, 2040 and 2050 offshore wind targets.

Powering Prosperity, which includes 40 actions that will be implemented in 2024 and 2025, was developed as part of close ongoing collaboration between the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and other Government departments and agencies within the Offshore Wind Delivery Taskforce (OWDT).

These actions aim to build a strong and resilient offshore wind supply chain in Ireland, as well as exploring opportunities for Irish companies to play a major role in the development of offshore wind projects in Ireland and abroad.

It also explores opportunities to leverage Ireland’s existing strengths in RD&I, finding ways to support the sector to reach the cutting edge of future developments in offshore wind.

The era of offshore wind represents a game-changing opportunity for communities right across Ireland and particularly around our coastline. The country’s key deployment and O&M ports can be major industrial hubs of the future transforming regions in the process.

A suite of policies related to the transmission of and demand for OWE and its derivatives also inform this strategy, including the review of the National Ports Policy, which will be conducted by the IMDO on behalf of the Department of Transport. The National Ports Policy provides the overarching policy framework for the governance and future development of Ireland’s State port network and is an important piece of policy development given the role that ports are expected to play in the delivery of offshore renewable energy.

Published in Power From the Sea

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)