Mr. Richard Cronin:

I thank the Senator. There are two questions, the first is our view on the pathway to achieving the 30% by 2030 and then details on our monitoring programmes. In regard to the first question, in Ireland at the moment we have about 2.4% designated as protected sites. They are not legally defined as marine protected areas but they carry out the same effect. These are under the birds and habitats directives and the wildlife Acts. It is a long distance from 2.4% to 30%. To go into that in more detail, it is noticeable that the coastal zone in Ireland, that first mile and out to six miles, has quite a number of designated spaces at the moment. More than 50% or 60% of that space has already been designated. This tells us already what we need to know, which is that to reach the 30% target, we are going to have to look at much larger marine protected areas. They are probably going to have to be offshore as well. When we look at the definitions we hope to develop for marine protected areas, there are some protection measures that already exist that may qualify and that would allow us to achieve some rapid progress, for example, on reaching this 30% figure. What I am speaking about specifically is that there are already long-term fisheries control measures, for example, for deep water habitats. These may also, depending on how we develop our legislation, provide the basis for marine protected areas. We should be able to make progress.

The question I have been asked before is, will we hit the 30%? I believe it is possible, from the position I sit in. We will need this legislation in place. With the legislation in place and with the contribution and partnership of the stakeholders and those who have a relationship either through their history or their economic practices, we certainly can meet that target. Large MPAs will be required and they will need to be offshore. We have a good deal of information already about those.

The second question was on details about the monitoring programme. Under the marine strategy framework directive, we have a comprehensive monitoring programme we update every six years. It measures all of the pollution pressures and other pressures such as marine litter and human-produced noise. It also measures the effect of other human activities such as commercial fishing. It also measures all of the biodiversity components, so it measures the condition of the sea floor and the health of non-commercial stocks - not just mammals we would be aware of but also such things as deep water sharks and non-commercial species. We are also hoping to develop monitoring that will help us to understand the effects of climate change on the ocean.

That would be important for the future to provide resilience for future marine protected areas. We have that overarching monitoring programme. We then have specific focused monitoring programmes, and while they do not fall directly to me, we participate in them. These include the ObSERVE programme, which is a partnership between a number of Departments where there is monitoring over a number of seasons and years of large mammals and seabirds from an aerial point of view and from ship sightings.

We have a number of these programmes. There are other programmes in place with regard to commercial fisheries, such as a data collection framework. Those programmes are under way all the time. When we look at the sea floor, on which we have done significant work in Government to understand, we have a long-term programme run by the Marine Institute to map the sea floor. This provides us with much of the information we need to make decisions about where we believe the MPAs are most likely to be and where the unique things that need protection are likely to exist. Does that answer the question?