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

Is the Minister of State giving us a cast-iron guarantee that development consents will not be given until we have plans that designate what is and what is not appropriate, which areas of the marine are appropriate for particular types of development? Consents should not be given until applications have, if you like, gone through the proper process of environmental impact assessment, full compliance with the habitats directive, the birds directive and the marine spatial planning directive. In other words, we must ensure we have the plan first. We need to properly and forensically assess these matters to protect biodiversity, fishers, our coastal amenities, areas that need special protection and so on. Will the Minister of State guarantee that development consents will not be given until mapping of the marine area has taken place? Decisions must be made on the basis of proper marine spatial planning that complies with all the relevant directives and environmental impact assessments. Consents should not be given otherwise. Decisions must not be made by developers. Is it potentially the case that sites which have been selected by the developers themselves will get development consents prior to all of those assessments? That is the key question and what we need to know. I hope the Minister of State will give us assurances and we will not have huge developments that effectively become a fait accompli before we have done the mapping of what needs to be protected, what is sensitive, and all the screening, if you like, for environmental impact assessment that should take place if we are not going to repeat the Wild West approach to development we have sometimes taken on land. Those are the assurances we need. The reason for these amendments is precisely because we are trying to lock that in. In amendment No. 79, for example, we suggest that in accordance with Article 8 of the marine spatial planning directive, we should "identify the spatial and temporal distribution of relevant, existing and future activities and uses in the marine waters of the Marine Spatial Plan the competent authority is preparing". We want the thing mapped out. Where is it appropriate to do certain things and where is it not? We should ask has there been a proper process in making those decisions before we start lashing out development consents for big industrial development in our marine areas.