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

I have two questions to ask in that case. Until we see the final text of the legislation this is just a general summary but the key line was in head 14(5)(a) and states, "a public authority may grant an application for an authorised activity". That's obviously something which is licensed prior to the introduction of the marine protected area, which does not comply with the conservation objectives in the designation or where the public authority considers that there are competitive reasons of overriding public interest exist, including social or economic reasons, requiring the authorisation of the activity or no reasonable alternative solution exists. One of the concerns some of us have with this is on who gets to decide that and against what set of criteria. These are big calls and we had this with the water extraction legislation, unfortunately, because the legislation finally was put in operation for a short time. We have very large water extractors that have been operating for a very long time. The idea that they may lose licences and jobs may be lost etc. was given as one of the examples of an overriding public interest. From the scientific point of view, to leave the politics aside, how does one make those calls? What is the best way, from an evidence-based perspective, to try to work it out because Professor Crowe talked about compromise and trade offs? That is essentially the legislative provision for this. What are the professor's thoughts on this? We have spent a lot of time talking about the future. We do have marine protected areas, albeit not enough of them. From Professor Crowe's knowledge to date, what learning can we take from what we have got so far? What have we been doing well and what have we been doing poorly? What can we learn as we embark on this new process in order that we do not simply forget what we have been doing up to date but can incorporate that learning good, bad and indifferent, into what we do in the future?