Mr. Richard Cronin:

Within the wider north-east Atlantic environment, Ireland sits in an area with another 14 countries and the European Union. In that area of 13.5 million sq. km, there are 555 marine protected areas, which is not an insubstantial number. Those marine areas are protected at both a national level, having perhaps been established under the implementation of European legislation, and on a wider level. We also have 11 marine protected areas in the high seas, all of which were established under the OSPAR Convention. Last October, we designated a 600,000 sq. km marine protected area for seabirds. The north-east Atlantic is the best example we have of the scientific, participation and designations processes. It is a great template and we are very lucky to be in that position.

When we get down to looking at particular administrations and how they manage this issue, there are different things we can learn from what is being done in different places. We have a certain legal code in Ireland and we can look to our neighbours on the island of Britain, the different administrations there and how they have created marine protected areas. We have some very good examples from our colleagues in Scotland in terms of the processes they underwent, the legislation they have and how it works. We have a good working relationship with the officials in the Scottish Administration and they certainly will be contacted by us as we commence this work. There are other member states in Europe that face similar challenges to those we face, particularly in regard to the types of activities we have in our marine space at the moment, the activities we hope to have and the participation and stakeholder processes. We have good examples from northern Spain and France, for instance, as to how we might create a model of marine protected areas that has strong involvement in coastal areas. We are very lucky to be able to rely on those examples.

Regarding the long-term protection measures I mentioned earlier, known as other effective conservation measures, we have done a lot of work with other countries in the north-east Atlantic, including both EU and non-EU countries. Again, we can borrow some of those experiences to ensure, most importantly, that the designations are underpinned by the right amount of science and that they have a strong mandate because they are well supported. Those are the kinds of key issues we have found from our consultations processes so far, namely, the importance of the involvement of stakeholders and ensuring decisions are made with the right amount of information.