Ms Laura Brien:

Since MARA's establishment, it has taken over the management and administration of the existing foreshore licences. Licence applications under the old Foreshore Act, that of 1933, are still with the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment if they were in the process before MARA was established. That Department is working through the residual foreshore license applications. MARA is now implementing a new licensing regime for licences we are calling maritime usage licences, MULs. We are only now working on the applications that are coming directly to us, and those are for a very specified list of activities. These are in Schedule 7 of the Act and cover the likes of dredging, site investigation, salvage, some of the survey work, and telecommunications cables that transition our exclusive economic zone but do not land in the system. There are two regimes that will be working in parallel temporarily until the old foreshore applications work their way through the system. No new ones are coming in under the Foreshore Act 1933. Everything now comes into MARA. Where MARA has a list of applications coming in, it prioritises according to European and national considerations, and then regulatory considerations, having regard to time within the system.

Within MARA over the past 18 months or so, we have very much been prioritising licenses related to offshore renewables activity, including site investigation licenses related to telecommunications activities and for dredging, and also site investigation licences for some of the ports seeking to develop to support offshore renewable energy activity and other activities.