Mr. Justin Moran:

To be honest, we will need to see what emerges from the Government on the approach it is going to take to develop the national designated maritime area plan. Once it does that, there will be a consultation with which everyone will be involved. Our members will certainly participate in that. It is really important that it is not just an ORE consultation and that it would involve coastal communities as opposed to just fishermen. There are many communities which use the maritime space for pleasure, hobbies, business or trade, so they need to be given the opportunity to participate.

Looking at ORE development, as we said earlier, if you develop an offshore wind farm and you need an operations and maintenance base, a critical part of that is to be as close as is humanly possible to that offshore wind farm. Looking at projects in Scotland in particular that I would be familiar with, they have absolutely transformed coastal towns or communities that had depended on either the fishing or fossil fuel industries. They are now depending on the ORE industry. Those are relationships we can build up over a long period. As my colleague Mr. Kelly mentioned, in many cases there are active fishermen who do two or three days a week on a crew transfer vessel and two or three days a week fishing. It allows them to keep doing the work they need to do for ORE, and also enhances food security.