Mr. Richard Cronin:

At the moment we have a strong commitment to transparency and participation. We do not set out in the general scheme at the moment that it will all go on a website, but it is something that may be very useful to do. There is a wider project under the planning side, which is the national marine atlas. This would show a lot of this information through visual representation of the mapping system. In my own thought process, as we roll into the future and the designations are completed, it will be possible to see where these might reside as pieces of information for activities for decision makers. They could drill into it and ask what we are protecting here. It is not just a shape. They could look at the rules around that protection and the issues around monitoring. One would have much higher levels of transparency than we might have seen previously. This is a good objective and is achievable.

With regard to how we project the participation piece, we make reference to it on the Government website because it is a standard and transparent way of describing it. If in the future we need to get into a dedicated site so that those keen observers who are interested but not participating are able to see into the process, perhaps we can consider that as well. Potentially one would then have a workshop piece of a website where only those involved could go in, and then there would be the front of house to show the work that is being produced, the work programme, the plan, where we are going to next, and the meetings we are having. It would have the maximum transparency and would include people who are involved and the list of organisations that contributed. Those are the kinds of things that may be difficult to encode in legislation but maybe should be at the centre of how we describe our inputs and how we put the participation piece into effect. It is certainly something we would consider.