Mr. Patrick Lyne:

I listened to and wholeheartedly agreed with Ms Uí Bhroin, so that was fantastic. She brought in New Zealand, which leads me to my point on resourcing. I was talking to a friend and colleague yesterday. New Zealand has a team of ten people allocated, full-time, to identifying new marine protected areas, MPAs,. It already has an extensive MPA network but has a team of ten people dedicated to identifying new ones. It also has a team of roughly ten people allocated to managing existing MPAs. There is a considerable need for people to identify and manage MPAs full-time in Ireland over the next 50 years or so. We will have MPAs for the rest of our existence.

I could go back over acoustic monitoring again and again. It is important to identify what is going on underwater, not just for cetaceans, for which sound is critical, but also for fish species. Many of our fish species use sound for reproduction and breeding. There are acoustic arrays on the east coast of the USA, installed by the state, which are helpful for wind farm development. Wind farm development there is strictly controlled but, at the same time, it is proceeding rapidly because strict controls lead to clear regulation, which allows wind farm companies and everybody else to know what exactly they have to do to comply. I encourage strict regulation.