Mr. Richard Cronin:

The Deputy made a few other points. One was about the timeline for designations. I would love to have them all designated. We as a team would love to have had them all designated quite a while ago. We are conscious of the priorities of other sectors in their roll-out of activities in the sea. We are also conscious of the 2030 deadline and the missed 2020 deadline. The safest answer I can give is "as soon as possible". If I could get more specific, the objective of the policy statement was to create a greater level of certainty about what is most important to do immediately. For example, we can look at where renewable energy is likely to go and go through our process in as timely a way as possible so that we can bring certainty.

Where do we think we need to fulfil the programme for Government for things like a marine national park or large mammals that are not fully protected? I made reference to one or two rare species or habitats that are threatened. That list should be made. I would be reluctant to call it prioritisation because then one would have deprioritisation. One would bring greater certainty to the timeline of delivery for those. One can say then, with confidence, that we will hit 30%, we will fulfil our obligation, it will be meaningful and we will bring certainty to the sectors that are really looking for that certainty so they can make better decisions and invest. That is what we will be looking at.

Earlier we mentioned timelines. We have tried in the use of timelines to bring greater certainty to that but we know, in our read through of this, once approval from Government came through, that we need to do a lot more work on tidying up those timeless to create that level of clarity.