Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank our spokesperson for affording me five minutes to contribute to a Bill that runs to 245 pages. As one not known for short speeches, I will do my best to touch on one or two aspects of this. The Long Title begins, "An Act to regulate the marine area". That is a mouthful and that is an ambition. It is to regulate an area that is seven times the size of our land mass. We are doing it for the first time. For too long, this island nation ignored or at least downplayed the importance of the marine environment and the seas that surround us. We have traditionally been fixated by the land. The emotional and visceral attachment of the people to the land is evident in our history and our literature. We are finally looking to the sea, not only as a means of transport for our goods and, as in the past, of escaping poverty, or for our fisheries, important as they are, but also to address our protection of marine diversity and as a means of addressing the critical and urgent goal of decarbonising our economy.

As my colleague, Deputy Nash, said and others alluded to, wind potential is enormous around our island nation. It is the future in terms of decarbonising our economy and we need to progress quickly to harness the technologies available to do that. That will initially mean harvesting off our eastern and southern coasts. Then, when technologies develop, which will not be in the very distant future, it will be in the area the Leas-Cheann Comhairle represents. There is the greatest potential for floating wind turbines off our west coast. We need to do that in a regulated way to make space for all marine utilities, and in a sustainable and planned way, in co-operation with all sea users. That is why a regulatory framework of this kind is essential.

I will make a brief point on that and we will come back to it. We need to move quickly on who will service those offshore wind facilities. We need a designated port. I have had discussions with a number of Departments and Ministers and there is no urgency about ensuring we have a designated port to service offshore wind. The bids and the investment are coming in from Pembroke in Wales, Liverpool in England and other ports. If we do not get our act together, we will lose the capacity to service our offshore wind facilities from our own port. I will come back to that point.

In the couple of minutes I have left, I will address one important aspect of the Bill. That is the exciting establishment of a new marine area regulatory authority with, as Deputy Ó Broin said, a wonderful acronym, MARA. This maritime regulator can ensure the optimum and orderly development of our coastal potential. I am delighted this new agency is to be sited in Wexford.

That was a prescient, wise and intelligent move by the Government. The body will become an important component of a new maritime area in Wexford town. It will be sited ultimately in a development now under way, namely, Trinity Wharf. I express my appreciation to the Government and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, for the decision to site it there. It will have synergies with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, which is already sited there. It is a good and wise decision. The maritime tradition of Wexford is second to none. Many streets in the town are called after vessels that sailed from the harbour, of which there were hundreds over centuries. It is appropriate, therefore, that down the quay front from the statue that commemorates the founder of the United States navy, Commodore John Barry, a new agency will regulate the next and most exciting chapter of Ireland's sea tradition.

I want to make a few remarks on the board of the proposed maritime area regulatory authority. Section 43 of the Bill, a critical part of the legislation dealing with the establishment of the board, provides that it will have a chair and ordinary members. Those ordinary members will comprise five civil servants, a representative of the County and City Management Association, CCMA, and four others. We need to revisit that. This independent agency will be as important as An Bord Pleanála. Five representatives of five Departments and the representative of the CCMA making up a majority is not exactly the ideal independent board I would want to see. I make that point openly. Section 46 excludes Deputies, MEPs and Senators from serving on the board. That is fine and I do not quibble with it. I do quibble, however, with the additional exclusion under that section of elected members of local authorities. It says something about the attitude of Government that the county managers are included ex officiobut elected council members are specifically excluded. Those members would have something to add and at least one should be included.

My time is almost up. I will have an opportunity in committee to deal with other issues. I will look carefully at the judicial review procedure and I was interested to hear Deputy Ó Broin's view on it. The threshold for getting a judicial review is very low, although the Deputy rightly says that 68% of applications do not even meet that low threshold. A large number, however, do meet it. I agree with him that the courts are not the place to ventilate complicated planning matters and we should try to avoid that. I expect there will be people who simply want to delay process. If there is another avenue to go and a statable case, no matter how hopeless the argument, they can get a judicial review. That is something we can look at again. This is important legislation.

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