Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (resumed)

Photo of Steven MatthewsSteven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That leads me on to where we were up to quite recently, where we only had 2%, or slightly more than that, of special areas of conservation, SACs, and special protection area, SPA, designations for the most part, which we were calling marine protected areas. We moved then to 8%, where we are at the moment, and we are approaching 10%, but we want to reach this target of 30% by 2030. We often ask who has or what is the best international practice, or with whom should we compare ourselves. Is there an opportunity here for us to say we will be the European leaders on this and put legislation in place which designates this because we have a large sea area? We were on that poor level for a long time but our trajectory is good at the moment. Does Professor Crowe think we can put ourselves in that place to say we are the benchmark?