Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This reminds me of the whole maritime and foreshore area. We have had a situation up to now in which the Minister, with no timeframe set out and, essentially, completely off his or her own bat, makes decisions about oil rigs, windmills or whatever it is. The Government, with the new Bill, which is only at draft stage, has said it must have a transparent process. We have to change that - it does not go as far I would like but at least it is a move in the right direction - to say it is not good enough to centralise all this power in the hands of a Minister who can do whatever he or she likes on a discretionary basis, where he or she "may" do this and "may" do that, or may not. When it is open to discretion in this way, who benefits? Almost always it is the big players who have the ear of the Minister. The Minister of State made an interesting comment. I take the point - I know it was genuinely said on his part - that since he got into his Ministry he has been talking to Coillte, the timber people and so on, but he did not see all of the issues when he was on the outside. That is a very telling comment, if one thinks about it - the insiders and the outsiders - but most people are the outsiders. If one is on the inside and the Minister has-----