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Ireland is setting itself the ambitious goal of developing 5,000MW of offshore wind energy by the end of the decade, in the meantime ports and harbours around the country are putting in place plans and infrastructure to facilitate such development. 

This according to the Irish Examiner, will allow Irish Ports to help deliver, assemble and service the various pieces of infrastructure required.

Onshore wind farms are already a common sight on Irish hills and mountains and they will be joined shortly by the rapid growth of solar farms. However offshore wind is seen as one of the fastest-growing industries that will provide a significant portion of the power required for the country to become completely carbon neutral by 2050.

To meet the goal of 5,000MW by 2030, up to ten separate wind farms will be needed. Plans have been announced or foreshore applications lodged for a number of floating wind farms off the eastern, southern and west coasts.

Last week the Government published the National Marine Planning Framework establishing a planning system for these projects. However, port companies around the country are gearing up for the extensive support industry that will be needed and have been joined by an increasing number of new firms set up in anticipation of the growing industry.

The newspaper also features related plans for Cork Harbour, Rosslare Port and Shannon Foynes. 

Published in Irish Ports

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.