Mr. Richard Cronin:

I thank the Deputy for his question. If I could address it on a global level, the national marine planning framework, which was published in July of this year, is Ireland’s rule book for how we want to develop the space and for how we want to have human activity. Contained in that planning framework document are Ireland's binding commitments to our protection of the marine environment. Those include protected sites, compliance with laws such as the birds and habitats directive, the OSPAR convention, which is an international treaty that goes beyond European Union ambitions, and the environmental targets under the marine strategy framework directive. We established 25 revised targets in 2020. All those are contained in that document, and let us call it the overarching roof with which all activity and decision making must comply.

The Deputy asked if there is a risk things might go wrong or we might make decisions we live to regret. We have that strong framework, which was an excellent item of work published earlier this year. Therefore, we have that in place. We then get into some of the more specific issues on the decisions on specific sites. Clearly, if we have a site, species or habitat that is unique and does not exist anywhere else, we have to consider whether any human activity could take place in that area. Human activity is allowed, and we should not be shy about saying that. Human activity should be done sustainably. “Sustainably” means that we do not cause damage from which we cannot recover. We should be conscious of that. We should also make sure that if we make decisions about human activity, it is done in such a way that the overall health of the species as a population is maintained and if we need to increase the health of that population that we do that also. We would set a conservation objective, for example, that we want things to stay as they are, we want them to get twice as good as they are or we want them to improve by a certain date. Whatever that is, we can make choices about human activity based on that. Among the decision makers, specialists and experts who advise us on this work, the knowledge about those parts of the eco-system that are fragile and sensitive, for example, very deep water, cold water coral reefs which can withstand very little interaction from human activity, are well understood. We might not have a full map of exactly where they all are but we know what to look for. If we are going to make decisions around consenting, scientific information will have to be provided around supporting the consent application or whatever it is. Therefore, we would know what to look for. The framework would be in place. The implementation of that framework through the subsequent consent process would be the challenge. After we do MPA work, we should focus on that, which would be interesting for us to consider.