Ireland, with fewer advantages than Scotland, has achieved so much more over recent years: its economy’s far stronger than ours, its growth’s greater than that of the UK and poverty is less harsh for its people than for ours.

Irish companies have moved into Scotland and now they’re showing what can be done with the bounty of offshore renewable energy. We already have the absurdity of the Neart na Gaoithe wind farm in the Firth of Forth, which is coming ashore near Torness, being jointly owned by EDF, the French state energy company, and ESB, the Irish state-owned electricity company.

In a conversation recently with the Irish consul general, I was told it’s that organisation’s largest ever foreign investment.

We’re already paying outrageously high prices for our domestic electricity yet almost all of it is provided by our own cheap renewable energy. The Irish people will benefit from the profits of the resource we’ll be able to see from our shore, and yet Scottish Power and SSE are privatised.

Meanwhile, the corporate profits increase, with National Grid making £4.6 billion and their CEO pocketing £6.5 million.

Making the contrast between the two Celtic nations even starker is that, with offshore wind, of which Ireland has far less potential than Scotland, they are ensuring profits not just for their state but for their communities. In the recent sale of Irish offshore wind farms, coastal communities and those hosting the renewable energy sites will benefit to a sum of €24 million – annually and for at least 20 years.

And that sum has been extracted from a smaller sale. Our resource and hence our benefits should be far greater. But in Scotland as in the UK, there’s no such provision for communities. On land, if you’re near an onshore wind farm that legislation applies, and considerable benefit can flow from the turbines. It’s high time the UK Government sorted that legislative failing and let our communities benefit.

Even with less renewable bounty, Ireland again put us to shame.