Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

This is good news. I am delighted to finally see the passing over of functions laid down in the foreshore Acts from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

I am, however, upset by the Title. I note that in the first few months of the Obama Administration, it got good at coming up with good, snappy and positive Titles to legislation. If I were working for the Obama Administration, I would call this Bill, the clean seas ocean energy and coastal zone management Bill. I am sure we can move forward with thinking a little more laterally about the proper Titles of legislation and the Attorney general is working in this area with his departmental colleagues.

It is over 50 years since Rachel Carson's book, The Sea Around Us, was first published. For me, that was a magical book about life in the oceans with the changing marine environment, its possibilities and need for custody, management and careful consideration of marine development proposals. The point rings true when one considers the area from the high water mark to the 12 nautical mile mark off the Irish coast is the equivalent of two thirds, 57%, of the area of the Twenty-six Counties. It is a precious area with economic activity but one on which we do not have much information.

It is important to properly manage this resource. The growing interest in recent years in coastal zone management concentrates our mind on how precious is this area, where the land ends and the ocean begins. We must get the interface - the thin line - between land and sea right. We must ensure any developmental proposals of this area are carefully considered and the end result is a positive for Ireland.

The coastal zone management strategy is sadly gathering dust some ten years after it was drawn up. It was an excellent document in its time. Our ideas about how to be proper custodians of the ocean resources have moved on in the decade since the strategy was published. We now see the sea as a living, changing and precious biosphere. We must carefully work this resource with this in mind in a true act of stewardship.

There is enormous potential for development in this resource. An area equivalent to 57% of the State's landmass gives enormous scope for energy generation needed to support the human population, whether it be tidal, wave or ocean current based. There is always the real danger that we will rush into allowing development to take place as we see it as positive. I am a fan of ocean energy and the capacity of offshore wind energy to generate significant amounts of electricity for Ireland is only too clear from the existing limited projects. However, the planning aspect of such development needs to be got right.

At the time of the introduction of the strategic infrastructure Act five years ago, I put on record my concern at moving too fast with very large projects. Paddy Shaffrey, the architect and planner, said during the peak of the boom that the big infrastructure projects, which will be with us for 50 or 100 years, must be considered carefully to ensure we get them right. As they will be with us for many generations, so what if it takes several years to get them through the planning process.

The scale and implication of marine-based energy projects are massive for the entire maritime environment. I would love to see many hundreds of wind turbines around our coast. However, I want them put in the right places. As Deputy Higgins pointed out, there is a need to carefully assess wind farm developments. Any assessment of their planning applications must be carefully done with examination of bird migration patterns and the impact on sea life. We must ensure, for example, sediment is not churned up by wind farms, killing fish breeding stocks in the process. The work done by environmental impact assessments can assist in this regard. There is a world of difference between placing a row of turbines four miles or 20 miles off the coast. If they are 20 miles away, they will be practicably invisible.

If they are four or five miles out to sea, however, they can bring about a significant change in the visual environment. It is important to put on record the kind of scale these projects entail. Some of the larger wind turbines that have been proposed are 100 m high with blades that are up to 80 m long. In essence, they are comparable in scale to the Pigeon House chimneys. The type of consideration that should go into where we place those turbines merits very wide consultation and a large amount of public involvement as well. We have to ensure that a mechanism is put in place to allow the public to be consulted in a meaningful way on massive developments that are proposed to take place. People have joked about putting site notices on the beach, but I think we should do that. In addition to the local newspapers, we should put up some kind of site notice to inform people about significant development that is proposed in the foreshore area.

Part of the changes in the planning system must involve greater public consultation. Getting that right is crucial. The visual assessment is crucial. I am not convinced that under the current planning regime there are people sufficiently qualified to judge the impact on the visual environment, whatever about the flora and fauna and other aspects of proposed developments. As we move the Bill towards enactment, we also need to look ahead to modernising the foreshore legislation and bring it from its current embryonic form dating to the 1930s when one simply put the plans on display in the local Garda station and the same planning regime applied whether it related to the holding of the Laytown Races or a 300 m high development in Dublin Bay. We need to think carefully about making it easy enough to run the Laytown Races but fairly complex and meaningful consultation should be required if we want to construct 200 or 300 wind turbines.

The potential for ocean energy is very significant. I did a back of an envelope calculation on the Kish Bank wind farm-----

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