Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will focus my comments on the need for partnership with fishing communities when the Minister is developing offshore wind. I want to report back to the Minister that I met with fishermen from Wicklow just before I came to speak in the Dáil and they are very clear. I speak to fishermen all around the coast. They do not feel that they have a partnership with the wind energy companies and that they are equals in terms of sharing the marine resource. The Minister will agree that there are three key stakeholders here: the wind energy companies, the people in the environmental NGOs which are looking at our marine ecosystem and there are fishing communities. This is a shared marine resource. We can get to the place that all co-exist. All of these responsibilities can be delivered, the full potential of our marine space can be realised but I am asking the Minister to make it clear in his engagements with the wind energy companies that they have to be serious about partnership, about dialogue, about listening to fishermen about the best location for turbines and about compensation where the fisheries are lost. There is a need for the Minister to lead the way and to state explicitly, I hope in his wrap-up comments today, that we can do all of these things, that we can achieve energy independence for our island, develop the capacity of offshore wind, protect the fisheries for our fishing communities and protect our marine ecosystem. It is important that the Minister makes a statement explicitly in that regard that instructs the wind energy companies to engage as equal partners and to meet their responsibilities in the time ahead.

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