Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for bringing the Bill before the Oireachtas. It is a hugely important Bill that sets out how we will meet some really difficult targets around emissions reductions and the transition to clean energy. I also thank the Department officials, some of whom I see here today, for the huge amount of work they have put into this and for the briefings they gave to our committee throughout the pre-legislative scrutiny of what was previously known the Marine Planning and Development Management Bill. I also acknowledge the huge amount of work which the joint committee put into the Bill at the pre-legislative stage. Our committee put forward around 43 or 46 recommendations in its pre-legislative scrutiny report. The majority of those recommendations, almost all of them, were taken in in the drafting of the Bill. It was suggested yesterday that we had not been issued with the correspondence that we sought from the Department but I want to confirm that the committee did receive the correspondence that we sought, looking for where those recommendations were brought into the published Bill.

There was a suggestion that the committee recommended that marine protected areas should be part of the Bill. That is partially true. The committee did suggest that marine protected areas should be part of the Bill, or, the same recommendation also included that marine protected areas should continue in a parallel legislative process which is under way at the moment. I wanted to clarify that.

The Bill before us today is huge and complex. It consists of a series of pieces of legislation. In the marine and maritime area, in recent months there has been the national marine planning framework, a document which went through a vast amount of public consultation and a huge stakeholder involvement group. It developed a high level overarching planning strategy for how we will manage our marine area, with all the users involved in that from commercial, recreational, fishers and coastal communities. There was huge engagement in that process.

There was also the Maritime Jurisdiction Bill which set out the boundary of our marine area. That is massive, as we have heard, comprising seven times the land area at 0.5 million km². We do not have a proper planning system for how we develop in that area which is why this Maritime Area Planning Bill is so important and so timely. There will be much development in our marine areas over the coming decades, over the next ten, 20, 30 years. Much of that will be offshore renewable development; there will be wind development, cable alignments and interconnectors. There is a lot of stuff. It is not just about wind. This planning Bill will cover that entire area.

There have been concerns about marine protected areas. I share some of those concerns. We do not have a great track record of protecting not just our marine environment but our terrestrial environment as well. Some 2% or 2.5% is designated as protected.

They are actually special areas of conservation, SACs, special protection areas, SPAs, or natural heritage areas. They are not generally designated under planning. They are designated under EU directives such as the habitats directive and the birds directive, and enacted under the Wildlife Act. We do not designate. With the marine protected area legislation we will designate marine protected areas. That legislation is coming. There has been an extensive public consultation period for about five months. I am aware that the Minister travelled extensively around the country meeting with coastal communities and with fishers, and all who have an interest in this. I believe that the marine protected areas legislation will follow closely this Maritime Area Planning Bill 2021, which is right and what we should actually be doing.

A lot of these developments will take time. Before we see these developments in the sea there is a consenting process, a survey process, and the planning applications will have to be submitted much as they are on land. They will be accompanied by stringent environmental impact assessment reports that need to be provided. These will provide for public consultation. The committee was quite strong on those recommendations. I am satisfied that there will be good public consultation in applications made under the Maritime Area Planning Bill 2021. I am quite satisfied that there would be high-level scrutiny and stringent environmental impact reports and requirements on developers if they wish to develop at sea.

I shall now move on to the Bill. It is huge and complex, which it must be because the challenge ahead of us to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and to reduce emissions is huge, complex and ambitious. It needs to be matched with a streamlined planning process to allow us to reach those targets of 51% reduction by 2030 and to be carbon-neutral by 2050. We are going to have to use solar and a whole lot of different renewable energy but the biggest contributor to that will be wind energy.

Deputies spoke about the setting up of the maritime area regulatory authority, MARA, which will be a hugely important agency that will be involved in the initial consenting and the enforcement afterwards. The enforcement has always been weak in our planning system so I am glad to see that MARA is being set up. Deputies all want it in their constituencies because it brings some 200 jobs. I believe that Wexford is the right place for it because there is good experience there and good scientific data built up over the years. Wexford is the right place for it. For any Deputy from a coastal community who is concerned that they will not see some benefit from this, I say that there will be huge economic value to our coastal towns, communities, ports and harbours.

The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, visited Wicklow recently, which is my constituency, when we looked at Arklow and Wicklow. SSE Airtricity will develop its operations and maintenance facility in Arklow. I would be hopeful that Codling Wind Park will look at Wicklow in the same way. There will be that benefit and uplift, including economic benefits, for all coastal communities in this. There will be a huge amount of employment, energy resilience and emissions-free clean energy. It is the future and we need to embrace it. I will be supporting this Bill. I thank the Minister of State.

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