Dr. Donal Griffin:

I think it is provided for in one of the heads that community groups or other organisations or individuals can make proposals. I am not sure which head that is but it is in there somewhere. Like a lot of the things that are just lightly mentioned, it is not very clearly or strategically put.

This point speaks to a lot of what Deputies O'Callaghan and Ó Broin have raised about the lack of clear MPA governance in the Bill. We have heads for management, enforcement, monitoring and lots of bits and pieces all over, but there is no real way of tying all of those together. It is feasible that we could have very good monitoring but with the lack of other important aspects of MPA implementation, that does not account for all that much.

We could be monitoring the decline of species very well, but we want to feed back that information and make adaptive change and management resulting in better biodiversity outcomes.

Ms Uí Bhroin spoke about architecture. I used the words MPA governance in terms of who is responsible for what, when and where. That is not entirely clear. The Bill would benefit from clarity. To speak to the point made by Deputy Ó Broin on expert groups, there is scope and a need for an expert group very similar to Professor Crowe's group which is more confined. It is not a case of either or; we need both.

We also need a wider stakeholder group involving everyone in the room. There may also be a third point to think about, namely, governance groups in terms of who the actual authorities are and the people and organisations involved at a State level or whatever that are going to organise the who, what, when, where and why aspects of MPAs to make sure they are effective. As I said, lots of elements are mentioned in the Bill, some of which we would like more detail on. We need to tie those together, which goes back to the point made about things needing to be tied together strategically. Things may now fall between a number of stools, as Mr. Fogarty mentioned. We may miss the mark with the legislation and that is what want to avoid.