Ms Mary Kelly:

The top priority from our point of view is to ensure that a coherent planning system is put in place for foreshore and offshore developments. That is what we said in our submission. We will be talking to the Department about detail but in broad terms the Bill does seem to put that coherence in place. It is particularly important to have one competent authority responsible for the environmental impact assessment or appropriate assessment.

The Senator is right to say that the heads of the Bill do not provide all the details. From what we can see, however, An Bord Pleanála is the competent authority and will deal with the environmental impact assessment. From the regulatory point of view and from the developer's point of view, that will bring a lot of certainty to the process. That is a very important point.

The Senator's second question concerned erosion which is currently the responsibility of the local authority and could be covered in development plans at that point. In addition, when an environmental impact assessment is undertaken that is the time at which all those kind of local environment issues could and would come into play. It probably comes into that sort of arena in the environmental impact assessment of foreshore development.