Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Cronin. To echo his last point, there is a keen interest in the entire area, not just the marine protected areas but also the protection, preservation and restoration of Ireland's maritime area. As he may be aware, the committee has spent the past two months on the Maritime Area Planning Bill, and the marine protected areas obviously came up in the context of that development and conservation protection. When the committee produced our pre-legislative scrutiny report on what was originally known as the marine planning and development management Bill, one of our recommendations was that such a Bill would include scope for designation of marine protected areas or that we would legislate separately for maritime protected areas. I am, therefore, glad to see that legislation is progressing, because that was a recommendation of the committee. There was great interest from the committee on that, so I thank Mr. Cronin and Dr. Ó Cadhla for their attendance here today. I now move to the members for a question and answer session.