Professor Tasman Crowe:

I thank Deputy Ó Broin. I will try to pick up on those points. I made a few notes as he was going along. In the stakeholder process there would be a number of examples where effective engagement with stakeholders has made a real step-change in the effectiveness of individual MPAs, in particular where there is a co-design process. This goes back a long way. One of the earlier examples is from the early 1990s in Chile where academics, state agencies and local fishing groups got together around a table and talked through what needed to be done. Previously, any attempts to modify fishing had failed. People just were not interested. They were not complying with any regulations that were put in place. There was a process of agreeing on what needed to be done, exploring the evidence for how it needed to be done and bringing people on board with participating in that. That generated a world first in highly effective co-management. Since then, it has been picked up in many other places. I was at a meeting in Brussels last week for the kick-off of a new project, Blue for All, which looks at best practice throughout Europe to try to come with a universal blueprint for co-creating effective and efficient MPAs. More work will flow from that over the coming years. It was highlighted, for example, that in Spain stakeholder engagement has become mandatory in a formal, structured way in designating, identifying and developing the management measures in protected areas, the reason being that it is recognised that they are much more effective when done that way.

We dedicated a significant portion of our time developing our report and thinking about how that would work widely. It was a strong view of most of the stakeholders that we engage with them and that public consultation should be a prominent part of the system. The usual key phrase was to get stakeholders involved as early in the process as possible and to make sure the process was as inclusive and transparent as possible so that people get a chance to feel their voices have been heard. Decisions will probably never go in such a way that everybody is happy with them but there is a good deal of evidence that suggests that if people respect the process, they are more likely to respect the outcome of that process. Ultimately, it makes the designations much more effective and the MPAs much more likely to work properly.

At the moment, that is not strongly reflected in the Bill. It is hinted at. I picked up a few specific spots in it where I thought there would be scope to further strengthen that provision. In head 9.2.1, for example, there is a public consultation process and the idea is to allow four weeks from notification to submission. That seems to be a very tight timeframe for most people to make a meaningful submission. The very nature of the primary interface being a public consultation exercise that is advertised in the newspapers is not the same as getting people around the table and talking things through. I believe that is an important aspect