Mr. Conor McCabe:

I thank the Senator very much for her questions and comments. I appreciate them. There are a number of strands to this. I might share the floor with some of my colleagues in answering. Initially, the governance of the national marine planning framework at a high level will be carried out as part of the Project Ireland 2040 family. We are working with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform at the moment to create a governance group. This was identified in the programme for Government, where it is called "Project Ireland Marine 2040". This will be something of a subgroup to the broader Project Ireland 2040 oversight board. We will seek to align the NMPF with the national development plan and the document Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth 2, which is currently being developed and which will be the successor to the very successful Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth. All of these plans, including the statutory, strategic and financial plans, should speak in harmony with one another. At the highest level, that is the broad governance arrangement. I will now speak to the other arrangements we have in place.

As I mentioned, we have an advisory group which has been critical to the development of the NMPF and in getting us this far. I hope it will transform somewhat, but not totally. I would like it to be the same membership, feeding into an implementation advisory group, so it will have oversight and give us the handrails, as it were, and steer us as we go forward. I might ask Mr. Woolley to come in on the nitty-gritty of monitoring.