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Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I welcome everybody to the meeting. Today we commence pre-legislative scrutiny on the general scheme of the marine protected areas Bill and we are joined by Mr. Richard Cronin, principal adviser on the marine environment; Dr. Oliver Ó Cadhla and Dr. Tim O’Higgins, scientific policy advisers; and Mr. Conall O'Connor, assistant principal officer, Department of Housing, Local...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: This is important legislation and I am delighted to see it come forward. We have two more sessions after this on next Tuesday and Thursday when we will meet with fishers and look at community engagement. We will also bring in some industry representatives and will then meet the Irish Environmental Network and the environmental NGOs. This has been well overdue. As Mr. Cronin mentioned, we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: We have two more sessions on the subject anyway. I will allow the officials to answer all these questions. Deputy O'Callaghan has to be in the Chamber, but we will at least get the answers on the record. We will facilitate Deputy Gould on another occasion.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I remind members to mute themselves when not speaking. I ask Mr. Cronin to continue.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I will take the next slot. I will follow on from something Deputy O'Callaghan said. I am conscious that people with a great interest in our marine environment - people in our coastal communities - will be watching this. Could Mr. Cronin describe a carbon-rich ecosystem of the kind described by Deputy O'Callaghan? What features such as coral, kelp or seagrass would it have?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I appreciate the range of expertise we have here and the opportunity we have to learn from it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: The terminology we use is blue carbon habitats, so it is marine environments that are carbon-rich or have the ability to suck in the carbon. Regarding equating them to something on land, and much of the time when we are doing the marine planning stuff, we must think about how we do it on land to get our bearings on it. We equate it to something like our raised bogs - the kind of habitats...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: Is it possible to plant seagrass and make conditions right where it naturally occurs so it expands?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: We will take the learnings back to here. We talked about data collection. From my knowledge, we may not have applied as many resources as should have been applied over the decades to our marine environment and research and data collection there. We have a considerable amount of interest from wind energy developers who are going to have to carry out environmental assessments or whatever...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: In the overall scheme of things, if we will have so many environmental assessments carried on out there, is there a standardised format where data should be gathered in a particular format so that data could be of value to us and that it is all compatible? They may be separate sets of information but they may not be inter-relatable. Is this something we need to set out through offshore...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: It was interesting that Mr. Cronin mentioned the non-scientific data and the more qualitative data that would come from the statutory and non-statutory engagement, which a lot of the developers would also do. Through Wexford, Wicklow, Dún Laoghaire and Dublin at the moment a lot of the offshore developers are having those public meetings and are gathering those data, including what...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: Having access to that information is a major part of the battle that sometimes happens when one tries to protect something, even in land-based planning. For example, when one tries to deal with information around an architectural conservation area it tends to be a case of whether it is going to stop one from doing this or that. It tends to be light on information that provides reasons for...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: When you look out to sea, for most people it is just the sea. It is just a flat surface going out to the horizon. It is the coastal features that they become much more aware of. They want to protect the dunes, the headlands, the migratory bird sites and that kind of thing. I am thinking about trying to inform the public and keep it generally informed that there is an MPA that extends 12...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: That is critical to the success of this and of all things. As a committee we looked at the river basin management plans and water quality in general in the country. I often ask myself why more people are not banging on the door and worried about these things. These are matters which we take for granted. The sea is an issue, in particular because of everything that washes off the land and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: Finally, Mr. Cronin mentioned that the designation and the management plans are similar, or are to go in tandem with each other, which is something we would have learned from designating Natura sites, where we did not apply management plans to them. Essentially, we just have that line on the map. Another issue is fragmentation and connectivity. Is the movement of species through the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I thank Mr. Cronin. I can see from what he and his colleagues are telling us, and what I have read here, that a great amount of work has gone into this and all angles have been considered. I thank him for that work. Does Deputy Ó Broin wish to come back in?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: I will go back to enforcement for a moment to clarify something. Deputy Ó Broin may wish to come back in on this because it is a point he raised. The Maritime Area Regulatory Authority will have responsibility for enforcement in consented or permitted area where development is going on. Where a marine protected area is within one of these development zones, will MARA have a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: For my benefit, will Dr. O'Higgins list some of those agencies? MARA will be one and a local authority might be another.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: The Deputy may go ahead. This is the kind of direction I wanted to go in with this question.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion (26 Jan 2023)

Steven Matthews: Is Deputy Ó Broin going to ask about an unregulated activity?