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

Deputy Nash asked where the threshold of more than five turbines and a total output of more than 5 MW comes from. It comes from Schedule 10 to the Bill. That is a threshold in the Government's Bill for classes of development specified for the purposes of Chapter 3 of Part XXI, the numbering of which gives you some idea of the complexity of this Bill's cross-referencing with the Planning and Development Act.

The Minister of State raises interesting points, but I return to my original point, which is that there are many people who will be impacted by these things who have no clue what is going on. I consider myself somebody who keeps an eye on things, who has read into things and who knows a bit, and I do not know the answer to a lot of these questions. I do not know why they have floating wind off the coast of Scotland, for example, yet the Minister of State is telling us it is not really practical. Maybe he knows the answer; I do not, and I would like to know. I would like to know why industrial offshore wind is being moved further and further out in the rest of Europe. I want to hear that debated. The people deserve that debate but there has not been a discussion.

What I do know is that corporations have self-selected sites. I repeat: they selected their own sites. We did not plan them. We did not designate them. This was not done under any planning process. They select the sites which are for convenient for them, will be cheap and very profitable for them and will have a big impact on our marine environment and communities. They have selected the sites, so I want protection until this debate is had. Maybe the Minister of State is right and maybe he is not right. I want that discussion about sea depths and the engineering questions and so on.

As I said, I read a lot and I am not convinced that there are not reasons they are pushing this stuff out in other parts of Europe. That discussion has not been had, but the developers are moving ahead. What we are looking for in this amendment is some level of protection.

LNG terminals and fossil fuel extraction should not be happening - that is a no-brainer. There should be no maritime area consents because you cannot do the development unless you get a MAC, if I am right. That is the point about starting at the MAC. If you do not get a MAC, you do not get the development.

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