Ms Mary Kelly:

As I identified, the single environmental impact assessment for major projects with one constant authority for the EIA is very important for everybody's sake. With duplication and two competent authorities, one can get confusion in the middle. There should be only one EIA. On water, sewerage and drainage, these requirements come to projects because of European legislation on EIAs, or appropriate assessments, AAs, if it is a habitats directive. They come in to protect the environment. Many people think it is a lot of red tape but its function is to protect the environment in general through EIAs, and specifically designated sites in terms of habitats. Most project developers understand EIA and appropriate assessment and know what is required and what they have to do. Most of the water, sewerage and drainage projects come with EIAs to An Bord Pleanála. The EIAs are usually well put together and very professional.

The heads of this Bill suggest the foreshore, the economic zone and the continental shelf will together be described as the maritime area. It will not be an extra thing but a designation. An Bord Pleanála will take responsibility, as consent authority, for anything that is designated strategic infrastructure in that area and anything that needs an EIA or an AA. That means An Bord Pleanála will be the single consent authority and this would include wind farms of a certain size and a number of other strategic projects. The local authority will be the consent authority for much smaller developments in the nearshore area, between the high and low tide marks. It is a big improvement to have one consent authority for all that.

I take Deputy Kitt's point about wind energy. There is much concern at local level around some of the big projects being proposed or promoted on land, and people on land say they should be put at sea. There is a long way to go before that plays out. While I cannot comment on individual projects before us, a strategic environmental assessment has been carried out on marine wind energy. If that is used to produce a marine spatial plan which designates areas that would be useful for wind, that would be very helpful and would give a structured approach to how we approach that. We are very lucky that we have a very good wind regime, both onshore and offshore. We could gain much economic benefit from that and it behoves everybody to try to do that. This Bill will be a step towards a very structured approach towards doing that.