Mr. Justin Moran:

I will bring in Mr. Goodwin, our head of policy, to answer this. I agree with a lot of what the Senator has said on the importance of resourcing the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

It is also important we resource the other environmental stakeholders. For example, if we have a large number of projects applying for foreshore licences - and just to be clear a licence is needed to carry out surveys because the Senator is absolutely right that the surveys themselves have an impact - and trying to engage with an organisation such as BirdWatch Ireland, the issue is trying to deal with all those applications and comment on them, inform them and contribute to them. Senator Higgins and I share a background in that we both worked in the NGO sector and, therefore, are both quite familiar with how under-resourced it is. Ensuring environmental NGOs can be resourced to play the full and detailed part in the planning system they should be able to is an important issue as well.

I ask my colleague, Mr. Goodwin, to talk a little about the importance of the phase 1 projects and the State-led approach the Senator touched on.