Dr. Ken Whelan:

The question about the involvement of community is very interesting. This is really important in the context of trying to look at what I mentioned earlier, which is the new vision for trying to plan this. I mentioned earlier than I am a very firm believer in getting people together at the conceptual stage. There is also the fact that we need to show people how effective this can be. A first-class article in The Irish Timessome years ago was written by a colleague of mine, Mark Costello. He worked in New Zealand for many years and encountered groups of fishermen who were hugely sceptical about marine protected areas. In the article, he described how he won them over through demonstrating to them the effectiveness of marine protected areas and how their communities were able to benefit from that. Perhaps it is time for representation from our various coastal communities to see what we are talking about in terms of not just scientific papers but practical results. If enthusiasm was building as a result of that sort of connection between the discussions where enthusiasm was building for different sorts of marine renewables and marine protected areas, it will alleviate a huge amount of the delay that is ongoing in our planning process. If I understand it correctly, the message from us all is to think about what comes before planning because that is critical in terms of getting people on board and moving forward.