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

When the Minister of State gives us those assurances, it is apparent he has been given them by someone else. While I do not doubt that he is honestly relaying what he has been told, it does not satisfy me that we are having a fully rounded and well-interrogated scrutiny of these amendments that relate to large-scale residential developments and large-scale industrial infrastructure that will fill the near-coastal area all around our coast with industrial developments. We are talking about large-scale, massive industrial development. We are allowing these developments flexibility. This is where proper scrutiny is required. I would not be satisfied unless I hear from all the stakeholders on this. It is fine to hear from Government officials, who have their view. I do not know where they are getting their advice from, be it from the Attorney General or whoever, but I want to hear from all the stakeholders who have a stake in this so that we can make an informed decision about whether what the Minister of State just said is true and that there is really nothing to see here.

I am not convinced that that is the case, even more so because of my deep anxiety about the site selection process for these big industrial offshore "relevant projects" that got special designation in the marine planning Act, whereby developers chose their own sites. That is what happened. They decided where they wanted to build. Even on land developers do not have that, but now, for some of the biggest industrialised development we have ever seen in the marine area, the developers have decided the sites in advance of any plan or any proper designation of marine protected areas. Then there are little bits like this about what has to be provided when looking for this flexible application, namely, "such other information, drawings or representations as the prospective applicant may wish to provide or make available". I repeat, "may wish to". Surely the onus should not be on the developer to decide what he feels like putting forward in his application. He might wish to give us some details in the application or he might wish not to do so. This is so wide open to abuse it is beyond belief. Developers could hold back stuff. They could say they want flexibility when actually they plan to do something different from the outset from what they have put in the application. Let us be honest that this is open to abuse and open to developers to say, "This is how we get the application through, and afterwards we can disclose the truth about what is actually in the application and what we are really planning." We certainly have not had the opportunity to scrutinise this legislation to ensure that this is not the case and that we have safeguards against that. We have not heard from the experts who could really tell us whether this open to abuse.

This just is not on. It is not on to do this in the manner in which the Government has done so with the time available to scrutinise the Bill. The letter from An Taisce says it all and is directed very strongly at the Green Party, quite rightly. I am pretty surprised the Green Party are going along with this.

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