Ms Maria Graham:

The Deputy mentioned that when legislation was originally conceived of in this area, it was called the maritime area and foreshore (amendment) Bill. It had a long and torturous process of development in terms of the legislative process within the planning framework. A lot of planning and housing legislation had to be developed at the time and that also probably coincided with a period where the offshore renewable energy market was not developing in technological and financial capacity. While we were taking applications within the foreshore current regime, they were not really being progressed. We got to a stage of having a near final text around 2017. That was subject to considerable legal scrutiny that brought up a number of issues.

At this standpoint looking back at it, I mention the complexities of developing in the marine space. There are three different zones, namely, the foreshore - the 12 mile limit, the exclusive economic zone, and the continental shelf, all of which have different rules under the law of the sea. One must look at legislation that dates from 1933 and at the raft of environmental legislation and other legislation that has developed in the interim. In essence, the legal advice said we need to go back to first principles and see what we need to do. That is what we have done and in so doing, our initial aim was to look at a level of streamlining within the maritime area and foreshore (amendment) Bill that involved coastal local authorities and An Bord Pleanála and eliminated the duplication of environmental assessments.

Our ambition in streamlining is now much stronger. We are looking at ensuring that, for the customers of this planning regime, there is a single common and consistent form of consent for dealing with offshore renewable energy or with other forms of development in the area. That should be plan led rather than development led because we found, particularly with offshore developments, that we would have applications for an area which essentially froze that area if they did not go ahead. It stopped other people who had the finances and the capacity to do it from looking from the same area.

A number of things are important in that context. The work we have done has been a joint enterprise that is driven by the immediacy of needing to deal with offshore renewable energy in a climate action perspective. That work has been done in conjunction with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and with the benefit of the Department of An Taoiseach taking a strong role with the legislation. In framing this and working on it, we have the advantage of looking at the marine spatial planning directive that has come out in the meantime, and we are implementing that through the national marine planning framework. We have produced a planning policy statement that talks about the need to have a forward planning aspect and a development management aspect to our marine planning framework. There have been revisions to the environmental impact assessment, EIA, directive and there is a recast renewable energy directive. We have had to take all of those things on board.

The Bill is now called the marine planning and development management Bill. It has a section in it that covers the planning framework, similar to what we have on land with the national planning framework, NPF. That section deals with how that forward planning aspect is done and then it deals with the issue of consent, of which the central piece is that central government will say, whether the development is for offshore renewable energy or otherwise, that it consents to the application to the development body, be that to the local authorities or to An Bord Pleanála. I will come back to that element of it. That consent to apply for planning permission is time-bound. Then it comes back to the contracts because for any foreshore consent to apply, there are finances that come back to the State associated with giving out the leases involved.

That is the concept. Drafting is ongoing and the general scheme has been published. There are a number of policy areas we are working on and finalising. Our target within the climate action plan is to have that Bill published by the end of the year. The general scheme is available on our website. We have to time the different pieces of the Bill around the pre-legislative scrutiny and then we will finalise the drafting.

The Deputy makes important points on the implementation of it and on the role of local authorities. On larger components, we would see it as strategic infrastructure. The board would directly deal with larger infrastructure projects. Even with the other components, many of these things are in a new area, even marine spatial planning. We have been talking to some of the universities because it is a developing skill as well. We need to make sure there are shared resources. Not only is consistency an issue, but there must be an availability of the appropriate resources within local authorities and within the board to roll out this regime. Local authorities would look to share resources on a regional level.

The other component within the legislation is that we can produce statutory planning guidance in the same ways we can do on the terrestrial side. For particular sectors, that would allow us to put in guidance, by which local authorities would have to be involved if necessary. We would imagine the larger infrastructure projects would go the board.

I refer to enforcement. Clearly, there is a loop that has to come in terms of ensuring we have a capacity to enforce it. That is also dealt with in our planning policy statement in terms of the need for stronger enforcement within the marine area.