Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As with the two previous amendments, these next two amendments, Nos. 86 and 87, are technically linked. They were originally one amendment and were separated by the Bills Office, but the Minister of State and his advisers know that.

Again, one thing that might help to clarify some of the confusion some of us are experiencing would be if the Minister of State in his response, and in as plain a form of English as is possible, were to give a sense of the relationship between maritime spatial plans and the national marine planning framework. I ask that because I think that when many of us thought about a review of the national marine planning framework, we thought it would be a big-bang review in which the entire framework would be reviewed. That was partly the reason for the earlier amendments.

The more I hear, though, the more I seem to be hearing that it could be a big-bang review or it could be a series of incremental reviews as maritime spatial plans or other things are developed. If the Minister of State could explain some of the context a little more, that might allay some of the fears we have. To give an example, these amendments relate to a new maritime spatial plan, but if the national marine planning framework is itself a collection of maritime spatial plans, albeit being produced in one initial process, could the review of the NMPF then be a process where marine spatial plans amend and update the national marine planning framework and thereby constitute multiple reviews over time? Is that a correct way of understanding what this means? Is that one option that exists?

This aspect goes back then to the question I asked previously about the public participation statement.

If it is potentially a series of micro reviews of sub-geographical areas, then when the first marine spatial plan is produced that, in itself, would constitute the beginning of the review of the national marine planning framework, which would trigger the public participation statement. If that is the case, it would be helpful if the Minister of State could confirm that or explain it a little more clearly than I have tried to do.