Ms Maria Graham:

We are on track with the development of MARA. We have set up a separate establishment unit within the marine planning area of the Department. The unit is headed up at principal officer level and has a number of staff in the expectation that they will be deployed to MARA in the first instance. We are starting an advance process. They are going through all of the different elements that are required to establish MARA. Shortly we hope to recruit the chief executive, put in place the board and assess the skills that are required for MARA, the accommodation and everything else as well as the processes. There is huge work in hand and the Department is well resourced to do that.

We will have regular and structured engagement with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, which is leading on this. That Department is considering the MAP process for the transitional projects. We are also gearing up the board, which will have to take on the pre-application discussions in the latter half of this year for any projects, if any emerge. Both my Department and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications have talked to the board about its resourcing needs. The project is very much a priority and we are looking at that. In the meantime, projects remain with the foreshore arrangements. By and large, what foreshore is dealing with is a lot of the site investigations and there are numerous requests in there that we are processing for site investigation.