Ms Laura Brien:

Within the skills piece, this is something that is very much of interest to the offshore renewables taskforce led by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan. We are active participants on the skills sub-group in that. We are feeding into that in terms of the types of skills and expertise we are looking for. Certainly, it would be no surprise to say we have limited expertise within the country in certain areas.

This relates to marine planning and the ecology aspect. It is something we are looking at. We see ourselves as providing a good career path for people. Where people are coming straight out of college and might not have a lot of hands-on expertise, that is certainly an area in which we would be interested in recruiting to build up that expertise over time. We will have a very broad range of work for people to do, whether on the consenting side, whereby people will have to learn about what an appropriate assessment is and how to do it, or on the compliance and enforcement side, which is the flipside of the same coin in a way, whereby you have to be able to understand what is happening on the ground, whether it is appropriate and whether it is what somebody has been licensed or consented to do.

The second question the Senator asked related to compliance and enforcement. Where MARA will be looking at compliance and enforcement, it will first be about licences we have issued. Those licences will be issued with conditions and we will be responsible for carrying out any enforcement of conditions within those licences. We will also be responsible for enforcement, compliance and monitoring of any conditions that may exist in the marine area consents we have issued.

The third area relates specifically to projects and developments that have been through An Bord Pleanála for planning permission. An Bord Pleanála does not have an enforcement function, and we will take on that enforcement function from it. If, for example, there is an offshore renewable project that has gone through planning permission with An Bord Pleanála and it has put certain conditions on that planning approval, we will then be the responsible entity for ensuring enforcement of those planning conditions.