Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is hugely important legislation dealing with the incredibly important issue of the marine resources of the State, as others have pointed out. It is worth setting out again for people who are trying to understand this huge and complicated Bill. I have not fully got my head around all of the detail but I have read quite a bit. Fair play to the civil servants for putting it together. It is a complex piece of work dealing with an incredibly important issue.

Ireland has one of the highest land to sea ratios in Europe with 7,711 km of coastline, which is 4% of the entire coastline of Europe. The foreshore area is 9.7 million acres, which is 36% of Ireland's land area. When one includes the full territorial sea area of the country it gives us one of the largest territories in Europe at 220 million acres, which is seven times the amount of territorial land of this country. We are talking about an absolutely enormous territory and resource. We need to think about the context of this legislation and why it is important to us.

First of all, we are an island nation and therefore our sea and our coastline are an integral part of our culture, our identity and our history. These are not small matters for us as a country, on so many different levels. This area also provides a livelihood to our fishers and to many others who work on or around the sea. It is a huge recreational amenity, which is important in all our coastal regions but is particularly important in Dublin. Dublin Bay is a UNESCO biosphere. It is a precious marine resource and visual amenity. I will not underplay the importance of that. Visual amenities are important. It is a huge tourist attraction and has huge economic importance. It is also a recreational amenity. This is not just about Dublin Bay; all of our sea and coastline areas are vital on so many different levels for the communities that live on those seashores and for the people who come to this country. It is one of the reasons that they are attracted to come here. It provides livelihoods for many people. It is also an enormous potential resource in the development of renewable energy. This is not just in terms of offshore wind, it is also about tidal and current energy.

Much work still has to be done to develop the potential of the latter but undoubtedly, these are renewable energy resources we will tap into in future as we try to address the climate emergency.

It is, however, very important to remember that just as we have a climate emergency, we have biodiversity emergency. We declared both of those simultaneously. It would be very wrong to imagine that addressing the urgency of one is more important than the other. In fact, to dismiss the potential for a biodiversity disaster to extinguish life or do extraordinary damage to our ability to sustain human life on this planet would be folly indeed. Biodiversity is critical to our survival as a species. Marine resources and marine life, and the biology of our seas and so forth, are critical to sustaining human existence.

What worries me about this Bill and the approach the Government is taking is we are starting on land, as we have always done in terms of our resources, and now, what we are potentially going to do with our marine resource - a huge resource - is that the interests of the developers and facilitating them will come first. We have a Bill, therefore, which is designed to facilitate the development of that marine resource before we have the legislation to protect the marine resource, the biodiversity, the livelihoods of the fishers and others who gain their livelihood from it, that protects the amenity at every level, whether it is recreational or visual, and that protects the value this marine resource gives for tourism, and indeed, for our heritage, identity and history as an island nation.

I mention in particular someone who is a very important inspiration for me in my area, the great John de Courcy Ireland, who learned his socialism from the sea. He always said the reason he became a socialist was because he worked on the sea and the thing he learned from working as a sailor was that the sea unites people; it brings people together. He understood the incredible importance of that marine resource. One of the great things he lamented, for example, was the fact that we got rid of our merchant navy. I think today about some of the ferry routes we have lost in our own area, for example, Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead. The neglect of our marine resource and the importance of the sea to this country has been a characteristic of the way we have dealt with marine and maritime matters. I fear we are doing the same again.

Do not get me wrong; the Foreshore Act was completely unfit for purpose and had to replaced. We learned that in our area with the attempt by Providence Resources to put an oil rig 5 km off coast of Dún Laoghaire back in 2013, which the local community fought and which Providence Resources eventually pulled back from. At the time, the then Minister of State at the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government, Jan O'Sullivan, acknowledged that the Foreshore Act was completely unfit for purpose and did not ensure the proper level of community participation and consultation or the protections we need for our precious coastal and marine resources, and that we needed legislation. That was back in 2013. None of that protection has really come into play since.

This legislation is way overdue and I know it is a big job for the Civil Service. I accept that. It has been a long time coming, however, and when it does come, it does so in advance of the protection of those marine resources that should accompany it. People need to understand about how we talk about ourselves being laggards in terms of climate action. What laggards we are, though, in terms of our marine resources. It is quite shocking, to be honest.

Some 2.3% of our territorial waters are marine protected areas, MPA. As the Green Party Deputy just pointed out, they are not even marine protected areas. They are special areas of conservation, SAC, and so on. It is worth bearing in mind some of the comparisons of our European neighbours. We are 2.3% protected; 45% of Germany's waters and 45% of France's waters are marine protected areas. The US, hardly an exemplar of environmental protection, has 41% of its water protected. Belgium has 36% of its waters protected, the UK has 28% protected, the Netherlands has 26% protected, Denmark has 17% protected, and you can go on through the list. We are at 2.3% and now we are bringing in legislation to facilitate industrial development. Let us be clear: we are talking about the industrial development of our marine resources at proximities to the shore that would not be allowed in most other European countries. The average permission given for offshore renewable energy projects in Europe last year was 53 km from the shore. Before that it was 35 km so it is actually rising. The level of protection that is being given by European countries to their coastal marine resources and amenities is actually strengthening. It is so far in advance of ours that the comparisons are quite stunning, as I will go on to explain.

What is particularly worrying in the context of this legislation is that some of the biggest offshore renewable energy projects anywhere in the world, which will have a fundamental impact on our marine resources and amenities and on those who make their livelihoods in the communities in those vicinities, will be at distances from the shore that simply would not be allowed in most other parts of Europe and many other parts of the world. They have been designated without any public consultation whatsoever but with many conversations with the industry, which even went as far as writing to the Business Committee of the Dáil last week to tell us that this had to be one of the first items on the agenda of the Dáil after the summer recess. That is the level of lobbying. We know from the records that the conversations going on between the representatives of the private, for-profit wind industry and the Government are substantial. These projects were designated relevant projects at very close proximities, which, as I said, would not be allowed in most of Europe.

I will identify the six projects. Two of them are obviously in close proximity to my own area, which would be approximately 10 km from the coastline. Some of them are as close as 5 km and none of them are much further out than approximately 15 km. I will not go through the whole list. People need to understand what the scale of these things are. In the Dublin area alone, there are plans for 61 turbines at 310 m each. That is each turbine standing 100 m taller than the Poolbeg towers. We all know just what a visual impact the Poolbeg towers have on the entire city. They define the entire city, and indeed I love the Poolbeg towers and I would hate to see them knocked down. However, the people of Dublin, for example, should have a say on whether we want 61 of those turbines, which are 100 m taller than the Poolbeg towers, splashed all across Dublin Bay without a proper planning process and without public consultation as to whether people want them. They will, however, be designated relevant projects and essentially escape the regulation this Bill is proposing for that marine area. Much of it is welcome but they are designated relevant projects and will be decided by the Minister, not by the marine area regulatory authority this Bill proposes to establish, as I understand it.

I see the civil servant shaking his head but from my reading of sections 10 and 12 of Part 4 of the Bill, the Minister will decide and can invite or allow further applications for consents until the maritime area regulatory authority, MARA, is set up. Critically, those relevant projects were self-selected by the private developers. They decided, in advance of us deciding what areas should be protected. In the case of Dublin Bay - I will let other people speak for other parts of the country they know better - the Kish Bank and the Codling Bank are sandbanks of extreme importance for fishers, marine life and biodiversity. They are very close to the shore and also have a potentially significant role in dealing with issues such as coastal erosion, and the private company decided it would have that site. Why? It is because it is easy, profitable and cheap for it to develop that site very close to the coastline, at a proximity that would not be and is not allowed in many other parts of Europe. Private developers selected the sites in advance of us designating what areas, biodiversity and livelihoods should be protected, and without any consultation with the public on the selection of those sites. That is a serious problem, because this should not be developer-led.

We would not allow it - I apologise - I was about to say we would not allow it anywhere else. Is that not the problem? That is what we did in this country and it had disastrous consequences when we did this sort of thing on land and let the developers dictate. I remind the Green Party that it was often a strident voice in insisting on proper planning; having proper local area and county development plans; adherence to planning regulations; proper environmental assessments and all the rest of it, but there is none of that in this situation. The private, for-profit developers will be required to give the people of this country, for a public resource, that part of our land and territory, precisely nothing of the energy they produce. There is nothing wired into the legislation, in terms of the benefits for the community, the country as a whole or the cost of energy we might get. I have a fundamental problem with that and also with its being, in effect, the privatisation of the marine resource.

The parts that the private developers grab are decided by them through self-selection, on sites that will have a fundamental impact on our marine biodiversity, fishers, coastal communities, heritage, recreational amenities and tourism, and will have so many other potential impacts. We should be very careful not to cut off our nose to spite our face. Is any of this about saying it is not absolutely imperative to develop our offshore renewable energy potential? No. Technology is a great thing and we now have floating turbines that are pretty much as cheap to put out, at no additional cost, at further distances; as they are doing in the rest of Europe. The impact is less on the fishers and from a marine, impact and heritage point of view.

We can do it. We have the technology and, by God, we have the territory to do it. It is incredible. People only have to look at the real map of Ireland produced by the Marine Institute. They would be aghast and amazed, in a positive way, by how much marine territory we have. We have huge potential to have a win-win, in which we have offshore renewable energy developed at distances that do no negatively or adversely impact on our coastal communities, fishers, marine biodiversity and all the other potentials that exist and are able to develop that renewable energy. Although why on earth would we then privatise that and hand it over to private, for-profit companies that have no obligation whatsoever to feed that electricity back to us at anything other than full market price, rather than get bodies such as the ESB to develop it? It is the same old mistakes we have made in privatisation in the past.

We need a marine area planning regime to replace the foreshore Acts. A regulatory authority is a good idea, although I question the issue of replacing the foreshore, in terms of the area of 3 nautical miles where the local authority will be the relevant authority and beyond that, the MARA. I would like to hear more about that, because after that distance of approximately 5.5 km, the impact of things is significant. The foreshore was approximately 22 km or 12 nautical miles. We will be arguing that we need a buffer zone to protect our coastal amenities, similar to the buffer zones that exist in much of the rest of Europe, which should be at the old distance of the 22 km foreshore and where industrial development would be allowed and a different regime might be used to deal with it. Local communities should have a say and the right to appeal decisions on the development of that foreshore area, right up to the old foreshore boundary.

I wish I had more time but we will have more time on Committee Stage.

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