Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this Bill. I always complain that we do not have enough time, but I certainly have enough time now. I will discuss the Bill itself before turning to my serious concerns about it and the manner in which the trinity of it, the framework and the forthcoming planning Bill are being handled.

I thank the Library and Research Service. I also thank the Minister's office for its briefing, which was helpful.

The Bill's purpose is to update the State's maritime jurisdiction law to reflect developments in international law and practice as well as relevant developments in Irish law. This is important. Along with updating the law to reflect those national and international changes, the Bill will consolidate in a stand-alone enactment the State's maritime jurisdiction law for the first time. This is significant, positive and good. Legislation in many other areas should also be consolidated.

The background to the Bill is important. I will speak about the legal background before discussing our climate change obligations and our dumping at sea. The Maritime Jurisdiction Act 1959 sets out the definitions of various territorial limits and boundaries, including for sea fisheries. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, was adopted in 1982. I do not quite understand something in that regard, although I understand that the convention defines the agreed parameters of near and far shore limits and the means for changes to territorial limits to be evidenced and agreed among nations. This Bill sets out to provide the primary legislation in recognition of that international treaty. My colleague mentioned this matter and I will revert to it. The convention was adopted in 1982, we deposited the relevant document on 21 June 1996 and the convention entered into force on 21 July 1996, yet here we are in the 21st century, having declared a climate emergency and a biodiversity emergency, and we are using language from 1982. The word "exploitation" is repeated throughout UNCLOS and the Bill. I am concerned about this. I do not know why the word is included or why it took so long in the first place to introduce primary legislation relating to UNCLOS, but now that we are introducing such legislation with no explanation for the delay, we are using language that is outdated and out of keeping with our climate change obligations.

Since 1982, a number of amendments regarding the State's maritime jurisdiction have been made. The first amendments were to the Continental Shelf Act 1968, which was the first Act to define Ireland's maritime territorial limits. We are now informed that those limits are outdated but, interestingly, the language is not. The Bill will repeal and replace sections 2 and 3 of that Act. It will also amend Part 3 of the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006, which contains definitions of fishery limits and maritime and territorial zones and limits, because it is outdated.

The Bill, which was initiated in May, is described as a technical Bill. That is an interesting use of language, given the considerable implications that the Bill has for climate change, the sustainable use of our seas and making reality of the language we are using. We can never go back to pre-Covid times. We must have a fundamental transformation of society. However, what should be a wonderful opportunity to make use of that language in the relevant provisions of the Bill and to recognise what our oceans are and what we should use them for sustainably is missing.

The Bill has 33 sections across six Parts and two Schedules. Importantly, it provides for definitions of the State's internal waters and territorial seas and provides a means of establishing boundaries and zones in the territorial seas in accordance with UNCLOS. The Bill includes terms that some of us are now more familiar with than we would like to be - "baseline", "contiguous zones", "exclusive economic zones" and "the outer limits". Specifically, Part 2 contains definitions and provides for prosecution of offences on foreign as well as Irish ships. I will not go through the rest of the Bill because it was set out repeatedly by the Minister of State in what was a good opening statement on a practical level.

I wish to return to the definition of the Bill as a technical Bill. The Library and Research Service's Bill digest tells us that the definitions in the Bill have significance for natural resources. When we were growing up, we were told in school that Ireland had no natural resources. That was our background. The digest also tells us that the Bill has significance for marine development, potential energy, including geothermal, the submarine storage of natural gas, carbon sequestration, fishery limits and submarine cables. I imagine that this is not an exclusive list. What the digest tells us is the only reference that I can see that gives us an inkling of what this Bill, the framework and the future planning Bill will cover.

We are now putting the UNCLOS into law, but I have serious concerns in this regard. When I read section 14 of the Bill, I thought that the term "exploitation ... of the natural resources" was inappropriate. It was pointed out to me by someone who works hard in my office that the Bill is replete with the word "exploitation". The reference to "the protection and preservation of the marine environment" comes way down the list and is not repeated in the manner that "exploitation" is.

As my colleague, Deputy Pringle, stated, there was no pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. It is the second time that we want to support the Government and participate in positive legislation but are not being given that option. It is essential that there be pre-legislative scrutiny. Post Covid, post Brexit and post our declarations of a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis, we have to begin doing things differently. The first step is proper scrutiny by a committee of the implications of this "technical" Bill, which is far from technical. If we are to learn anything, it is that we must change how we are doing things. We should start with that transformation.

I do not like the word "demonised", but we have been accused repeatedly of being negative and trying to paralyse development. The Taoiseach said that. None of us wants to paralyse development. Rather, we want sustainable development so that we will get out of the climate crisis.

Let us consider what people have said, for example, Sir David Attenborough, who recently told the G7 leaders that the world was within ten years of reaching dangerous tipping points. He stated:

We are now on the verge of passing tipping points, boundaries that once passed will unleash irreversible and self-amplifying change. Then all the innovation wealth and political will in the world will not be enough to save our civilisations.

He also stated that our natural world would change from being "our greatest ally to our biggest foe" and accelerate global warming. The G7, not known for its radicalism, stated: "the unprecedented and interdependent crises of climate change and biodiversity loss pose an existential threat to people, prosperity, security and [the planet]". This was not the radical left talking about the planet, but the G7. These countries said that 2021 could be a turning point. I would like to tell young people in our country that 2021 and 2022 will be a turning point in the way we do business. I turn to this legislation, which is described as a technical Bill, and I look for transformation, a change in spirit and a change in leadership that views our oceans and seas as belonging not just to Ireland, but to all of the world, given that we are all interconnected, and determines whether we use sustainable words about how we need to bring life back to our oceans and seas, but I see none of that. There is no commitment to the UN's 17 sustainable development goals, No. 14 of which commits to life below water. These goals were passed in 2015 and we are supposed to have fulfilled our obligations under them, including banning poverty, by 2030.

We are eternally grateful to the non-governmental organisations, NGOs, on the ground for filling in the gaps in our knowledge, which should have been filled by the briefing document. It was not a bad briefing document but it was not comprehensive or complete. We find out from the NGOs that we do not have any marine protected areas. Will we address that at some stage in the future?

We see the plastic. I will quote the foreword to a document from a non-governmental organisation, the Minderoo Foundation, which was written by a former American Vice President, Al Gore. We like to praise some American Presidents, do we not? The current US President is our friend and I presume the Government thinks Al Gore was our friend. What does he say in his introduction to this document? He states:

The trajectories of the climate crisis and the plastic waste crisis are strikingly similar – and increasingly intertwined. For generations, we’ve treated our atmosphere like an open sewer, constantly pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the air each day. Similarly, we are treating the ocean like a liquid landfill [we are talking about the ocean and seas here] left to accumulate at least eight million metric tons of plastic waste each year.

Where is the plastic coming from? Twenty companies produce 55% of the once-off plastic and 100 companies produce more than 90% of the plastic. There is no mention of anything such as that. To go local, let us look at wind farms. I am fully in favour of recyclable goods. I am on record as saying we need to take drastic action on climate change. However, we are putting up wind farms on land and in sea without any consultation with communities and without a return for or ownership by communities in order that profits would go back to them. Instead, once again, as the Tánaiste put it, the economy will take off like a rocket, which tells me we have learned absolutely nothing. This Bill, described as a technical Bill, is anything but and it should be a golden opportunity to bring the transformative action we need.

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