Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to speak on the Maritime Area Planning Bill 2021, which seeks to provide a legislative framework for a new streamlined development consent process for activities in the maritime area, including offshore renewable energy. The Bill also provides for the establishment of a new agency, which is the bit I do not like, the maritime area regulatory authority, or MARA. I remember “Mara” used to be referred to on “Scrap Saturday” and that was P. J. Mara, God rest him, a friend of mine. I hope this will not be another quango. We have so many of these quangos and agencies. If the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will allow me to digress a small bit, we have the Marine Casualty Investigation Board, which is totally unfit for purpose. Two young men from my constituency drowned nearly 11 years ago off Helvick and there was no proper investigation or inquiry. Nobody with seagoing experience is on that board. There is every kind of hanger-on or political appointee but nobody with seagoing experience. It is imperative, if this MARA is to be set up, that we will not be shouting “Mara”, as we heard back in the past, and that it has people who know what they are doing.

I know nothing about offshore wind energy but I am all for it. I heard a Deputy say earlier that the stocks might be replenished because some of the bigger boats might not be able to commit themselves in the area. That should have been looked at years ago. Our fishing industry has been wiped out and all we see is the compensation scheme. I remember when the Carlow sugar factory, in the Minister of State's constituency, closed and it was then moved to Mallow. I had huge engagement with the people moving it because there was massive equipment which went through Tipperary and there were problems all over the place. I apologised to the contractor after a delay of three or four days trying to get through the town of Cahir. He said that, if the truth be known, he was moving it closer to the scrapyard in Haulbowline. The closure sent it to Mallow and Mallow was gone shortly afterwards, with the loss of that valuable industry. We have lost the fishing industry. We are not learning from our mistakes. It is all but lost. It is lost, it is gone, and we have a compensation scheme. What good is compensation for people whose lives are at sea, whose lives are work at sea, who are providing jobs and spin-off jobs and, above all, providing food for our people and people who want to visit our shores? What has gone wrong?

I know there is a review of the Marine Casualty Investigation Board at the moment but it is a token review. It is not fit for purpose. Who will be on this new agency? Is it more party cronies divvying it up between the three parties, or somebody might lobby from abroad and send texts to get on it because they know somebody? This is what is wrong here.

We are trading recklessly as regards power supply for our country. I was in contact with EirGrid last spring to be told we had two orange and two amber alerts in the fall last year. Without doubt, we are going to be lurching into darkness this year. There have already been unexplained power cuts in different towns and people have contacted me, albeit the power cuts were short. We have to consider the damage that does to equipment, especially when it is without notice. It is bad enough if a swan hits a power line, which can happen in my area, or there is an accident, a storm or an act of God, and we have to turn it off. The Government is closing down peat stations and not replenishing supplies. We are trying to rush by setting up this agency and bringing forward this legislation.

We definitely need to utilise wind. God knows, we have enough area of sea around the country and I have the research figures here, which I do not have time to go into. It is massive, as we know. We are a small island country but we are losing our destiny as a sovereign nation. We have lost it; we have sold it. Who owns these big conglomerates that are going to come in and develop this? I heard Deputy Calleary, for whom I have great respect, mention the community developments. The same happened with the turbines. There was huge angst and anxiety in my constituency because they were all out-of-town developers and big companies that were doing the development. They thought they could, like Cromwell, nearly take over the county of Tipperary. When Cromwell came over the Vee from Port Láirge - the Minister of State knows the area - he looked down on the plains of south Tipperary and the Golden Vale. What a land worth conquering, he said. Some of these companies think the same and they treat people with disdain. They do not consult, they do not engage and there is no bottom-up engagement with the community.

I am all for community, forbairt in local people and the meitheal spirit, but we have gone away from it. I note two meetings in my county in recent days trying to revitalise our villages. Public meetings start at the bottom. They have been denuded and cleaned out, with shops closed, pubs closed - everything closed. The way the housing policy is going now, we cannot build houses and we are herding everybody into the cities.

On this specific legislation, I will work with the Government constructively. However, as I said, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage brought forward another part of this before Christmas and he did not even go through pre-legislative scrutiny. This is not the way to deal with such issues.

I have listened to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and others who know more about this than I do talk about their fears regarding big companies when they come in. Do MARA and the other agencies have the power to police it? The Garda has neither authority nor equipment to go out on the sea to deal with the Marine Casualty Investigation Board and they conduct desktop studies. Conducting desktop studies with these big companies would be very dangerous.

The policy around our renewables and our energy is gone daft. The price of ESB is gone hugely expensive. I am told that in Lanesborough, the Government is dismantling a peat processing plant and it is being exported to Germany and being put into reoperation as a peat processing plant out there. I am all for climate change and being sensible about green policies but this is daft. We are closing down. We are tying our two hands behind our back and nearly blindfolding us. We will be in the dark in the winter. We will be fumbling around trying to feel our way or back to the candles. This is not the answer.

Sustainable local involvement by community groups must be nurtured and supported. We should take chapters from the different pieces of legislation across the water in England where they have community gain in all planning applications. Deputy Michael Collins, my colleague in the Rural Independent Group, stated before me how he knows that the fish farms and the merits of them can be achieved elsewhere. That is what the planning authority is for, but for any decision to take ten years is archaic. No developer will wait.

Then we had the situation in the Minister of State's constituency where our friends in An Taisce are holding up a fabulous splendid pristine-clean company to process our milk into cheese that is needed, with a Dutch company as partners. For a fourth time, they are going back to the courts. We are told they will go to the European court. Where was An Taisce when we allowed all these data companies to come in here and make the ordinary public pay for the ESB for them by the reverse charges? This is crazy stuff. We are crucifying and, as I mentioned the late Oliver Cromwell, we are going back to the people to make them paupers again - pay up, shut up and stay quiet. Over the past 18 months, we have terrorised them and locked them down completely. Our freedoms have been denied to us.

In this area, we have allowed the fishing industry to go like the beet industry, but will we allow these big offshore companies to come in? We do not have the expertise and, meaning no disrespect to the Department officials here, we probably have no proper expertise dealing with it either. We need to get in the right people and expertise. As I said, we need to get the right people on MARA because if we do not, we are piddling against the wind. We are talking about wind energy here and we could create a lot. All the hot air spoken here last night would nearly power the place for a week if we could capture and use it. That often happens in here.

I am asking the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. He is a Green Party member. I have respect for the Minister of State but the policies are on their head when we have data companies using such quantities of electricity. We are building more of them and we are boasting about them. There is a building going up on the Naas Road - the Ceann Comhairle probably sees it as well as I do. It is massive and we cannot get a henhouse built or build a log cabin. We cannot build log cabins anymore because we cannot cut the trees. I said yesterday morning here that when somebody plants any crop they are entitled to harvest it. You should not have to get a licence to harvest a crop of trees after waiting 25 or 30 years.

On this Bill, I look forward to engaging with the Minister of State on it. Deputy Collins was lamenting the fact the Minister of State was in west Cork and he never met the Deputy or told him. That is disrespectful to any Oireachtas Member but it is happening all the time. The Minister of State promised to visit the wonderful Knocklofty House in Knocklofty Demesne, a former home of the Earl of Donoughmore who was kind to the IRA men on the run, looked after them, left them train and fed them. The house now is being plundered. The Minister of State promised to come and see it. I beg the Minister of State to come and see it because it will not survive another winter.

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