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

A mountain fell down because all the trees on the top of it were cut down and a wind farm was built. This had devastating consequences for a community. If we do not get this stuff right, it has very serious consequences. A huge number of fines were then levied on this country for years. We are now planning major industrial development in our marine area. We have a Government that is giving a special pass, as I see it, to a number of legacy projects that will see massive industrial development all around the near coastal area along the entire east coast and much of the rest of the country. By any stretch it will have a big impact on people, fishers and the marine environment. God knows what it could do to the marine environment. If these things can make mountains fall down, they can also do a lot of damage to marine life and the marine environment if we do not get them right. We have a Government that has given a special pass to these legacy projects. They are all projects of private corporations. They are not projects of the State but of private corporations interested in making money from our marine when we have the lowest number of marine protected areas anywhere in Europe. This itself is a sign of the lack of commitment in the State to protecting our marine environment.

Now the Government has come along with a Bill that is supposed to deal with the issues of substitute consent that arose out of Derrybrien. It introduced a Bill on this issue, which is very serious in and of itself, and then, at the last minute in the last week of the Dáil session when a deluge of legislation is being piled through and guillotined, we get dozens of pages of amendments that introduce wholly new issues. These new amendments impact on matters such as the plans for industrial development of the marine and large-scale residential developments, which I did not mention on the previous occasion.

Let us consider what a shambles strategic housing developments were. Of course, they were not a shambles for the private developers and the investment funds based in Guernsey and the Virgin Islands making a fortune. They were a shambles from a planning point of view and for the communities they impacted. They have done nothing but worsen the housing situation. We have major amendments that will in the case of large-scale residential developments allow developers to have flexible planning applications. Is the Minister of State serious? What is the basis for this? After the mess that was made of the strategic housing developments, there will be flexible applications for the replacement of such developments. This has serious implications for public participation, the Aarhus Convention and the credibility of the entire planning process.

The Minister of State has come in here very feisty I must admit and fair play to him. He was obviously told to come in fighting. He is saying the amendments are technical. There is nothing technical about it. We have a new type of planning application for something that is very controversial, to put it mildly, as a replacement for strategic housing developments and developers can ask for a flexible application in which they do not have to give all of the details of what they will build. Immediately alarm bells start ringing when the Government comes in and says this is technical when it is self-evidently not technical. It is very substantial.

The massive industrialisation of our marine environment is not technical. We all want offshore wind and renewable energy but we are deeply concerned that we have not protected as we should have the areas where this industrialised development should not take place. The Government wants flexible applications where circumstances could dramatically change. These changes could have a very serious impact on our marine environment. In case anybody says that even raising these points means we are not serious about the environment let us remember the biggest carbon sink on the planet is the sea and what lives in the sea. If we mess up the sea and marine biology in the name of addressing climate change, we will potentially do the opposite and do more damage to the climate and to biodiversity. These are not small issues; these are very serious issues.

Even with regard to the measures that we like, such as those relating to short-term lets, we wonder why they are being introduced for only six months. We need to have serious scrutiny of these matters. What sort of enforcement will there be? Does it mean anything if there will not be enforcement? All of this needs to be scrutinised. None of it will be scrutinised because of the guillotine and the fact the amendments have been introduced at the last minute.

The briefing we got the other day was not a place to argue. We were trying to get our heads around the massive number of amendments. Something I asked for, as Deputy Matthews knows, is whether we could please have an explanatory memorandum to explain what the hell is in these amendments. It was not available at the time. Because we asked for it, it was eventually produced at 8.58 this morning. That is when we received it. Now we are dealing with all of these amendments and the Bill is being guillotined. If this is not a disgrace in terms of legislation I do not know what is. Please do not tell us it is technical. Do not try to fool the public, the media or whoever it is the Minister of State is trying to fool by saying such things. This is sharp practice and there is no question about it. It is sharp practice with things that have very serious implications for our environment and the public.

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