Mr. Richard Cronin:

I was trying to make notes on the questions so I do not forget them. The Deputy asked three or four questions. The first related to legacy projects and timing. In a way, this is linked to how we work with others in the Government who have other responsibilities. In the absence of the MPA legislation being in place at this point, we work on legacy and future projects on an ongoing basis through a structure between both units in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, including those responsible for the development of the offshore energy sector, our colleagues in spatial planning and our colleagues who are responsible for the birds and habitats directives. We work with all of them and others in government, including officials in the Department of Transport and other Departments, on the development of a new offshore renewable energy development plan for Ireland. The target for delivery of that is the end of 2022. The work on sensitivity mapping, which includes where there is likely to be a conflict and where the easier areas to start development are likely to be, is under way and is happening at two levels. One is at a technical level among a number of experts and the other is at a senior steering level, where those timing and infrastructure risks are all being teased out to work out the real landscape.

In this Department, we are working on the development of a similar sort of timing map, across all the work and units, with our colleagues in planning and with those responsible for the birds, habitats and water framework directives. We have an overall map of all the work travelling through 2022 to 2024 and beyond in order that we remove that risk of uncertainty around there being timing mismatches. If time mismatches occur, we can then take action. We can decide if a risk is real and material and, if so, take a mitigating action to prevent it.