Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Much of this can be facilitated. The amendment is reasonable.

We will be defeated this evening, but the advantage of preparing for the third phase of the legislation is that some fundamental principles need to be laid down such as are contained in this amendment, namely, the concept of the public ownership of the foreshore, the concept of public usage, the concept of balanced multiple and differentiated usages, be it in terms of seaweed, fishing, access, recreation or public access. I have no hesitation in stating that the idea that any island people would face barbed wire cutting them off from the sea must not be accepted. It simply must be outlawed. More importantly, as Deputy Ferris has said, the sheer scale of what has been visited upon a small Irish-language speaking community is so vast that suddenly they are presented as the people standing in the way of something that is for the greater good, and we are right back to the definition of the public interest. There can be no serious consideration of public interest unless there is adequate consultation. The consultation, to which we will come in a moment, should be not be on behalf of local authorities with managers but with elected public representatives. Neither should it be between corporations and a few people locally but with representative community voices.

This is a simple point. We need jobs and development, but people have a relationship with place and community. The example Deputy Ferris has given is an Irish-language speaking community which one day woke up to find people with an appalling international record for trampling on native people's rights had moved in on top of them. As the Minister who was responsible for bringing into law some of the protections for the environment and for birds, I must say these were thrown aside. It really was a case of the media getting involved then and, as might be expected, it was the people who had the largest trough of money who counted in the end.

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