Dr. Cecil Beamish:

Yes, if it is the wider marine spatial planning. That could cover all sorts of things, such as exploration for minerals, dredging, dumping at sea, fishing and so forth. Any of the activities that can impact in any way would be covered within a marine spatial planning approach. It would be likely that any such approach would have to take on board the other legislative processes in place. For example, what is being done in the Natura 2000 sites is going to be the infrastructure on which one decides on the natural environmental impacts in a given area and how one might zone that area for an activity. However, we are not there yet. We do not have the primary legislation yet and we have not built the plan. That is being examined by the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government at present.