Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to speak on the Maritime Area Planning Bill 2021. As an elected representative for one of Dublin's coastal constituencies, I am all too well aware of the negative impact planning along the coastline has had on local communities, over the years and right up to the present day. This is an extremely important and vast piece of legislation and will have far-reaching consequences for generations to come.

We need a robust system that will deliver for the State and, most importantly, our coastal communities, which have often been forgotten and failed.

It is all well and good speaking about vast pieces of legislation, but I do not see us getting the basics right in Sandymount or Ringsend. When you walk down the Shelly Banks and around Sandymount strand and experience the dreadful smell of what the council tells us is Ectocarpus - there are vast amounts of it, making Sandymount strand almost unusable - or hear that another "do not swim" notice has been put in place, it is upsetting for residents and visitors. You might stroll by the Poolbeg lighthouse, which is a popular spot for sea swimming at the Half Moon swimming club, and see brown foam floating on the water's surface only to be told by officials it is harmless and just the result of heavy industry further up the Liffey. Sandymount strand as well as Clontarf in the north of Dublin are regularly unusable because of neglect by State authorities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. During the winter, I regularly get reports from rowers in the Stella Maris Rowing Club and St. Patrick's Rowing Club of raw sewage floating past them as they row up the Liffey or along the coast. Recently, I reported what appeared to be waste discharge but was told it was grand. If you saw it, you would not put a dog in it, never mind kids. You would not feel safe even wading into it up to your ankles.

This situation is not acceptable and has to change. We must do something about it. Coastal communities should not have to put up with these failures time and again. We need to start getting the basics right. The State needs to start delivering for these communities. We need additional water quality monitoring at beaches and shorelines where there are swimmers year round. Sea swimming has taken off and is something we must keep up with, but we are not at the moment. Information needs to be made available to the public rather than buried online. It needs to be published in local media and on social media. We need to escalate rapidly the development of infrastructure nationwide to treat raw sewage before it is discharged into coastal waters. We need short-term engineering solutions to be put in place while works are being carried out to prevent further discharges of raw sewage every time there is heavy rainfall. These requests are moderate and would improve the impact on coastal communities immensely.

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