Legislation for the construction of offshore wind farms should include the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs), a campaign group has said.
The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) said that Ireland could destroy its marine ecosystem if it does not establish MPAs to guide decisions on where offshore wind farms can safely be established.
MPAs are sections of the ocean where a limit or ban has been placed on human activity or offshore industry to protect marine habitats, to allow safe breeding grounds for threatened and endangered species and to increase biodiversity.
In the coming months, the Marine Planning and Development Management Bill is due to be signed into law and for the first time will create a system for offshore planning applications in Ireland.
However, the proposed legislation does not define MPAs in law or provide a mechanism for them to be established, meaning that permission could be granted for offshore turbines in areas that have important marine ecosystems.
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Pádraic Fogarty, campaigns officer at the IWT, said: “If this goes the way the government is planning, then the industry will have taken their pick of development sites and the MPAs will just have to squeeze into whatever is left over.”
He said there are particular “hot spots” for marine species that need to be protected but without these areas being mapped out planning authorities could approve offshore projects for these sites, damaging the biodiversity in the area.
“We could end up destroying marine habitats, we could end up impacting internationally important bird populations and we could end up impacting important whale and dolphin populations,” Fogarty added.
The government has committed to expanding Ireland’s MPA network from 2.13 per cent to 30 per cent by 2030 and a public consultation process is underway to inform the legislation that would be needed to do this.
Fogarty said this will not be completed in time to inform decisions on where to establish offshore wind farms.
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He said: “It is 18 months since the government commissioned an expert report on MPAs. That was only published in February this year and now there is a consultation that is going on until July and the proposal then is that there is going to be new legislation for creating MPAs.
“You can see there is a level of urgency around the infrastructure that we are not seeing around MPAs. At the moment it could be several more years before we see the first MPAs.”
Fogarty said a mechanism to designate MPAs should instead be included in the upcoming marine planning legislation.
“That would be the sensible option because you are creating the MPAs in parallel with the development and that is good planning whereas at the moment it looks like we will be doing the planning without the MPAs and who knows when the MPAs will come into force.”
He added: “The other thing that could be done is sensitivity mapping where you would sit down with a scientist and decide where are the likely places that we would be putting these MPAs and at least give them some visibility.”
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Offshore wind energy forms a key part of the government’s Climate Action Plan to increase the proportion of electricity generated from renewable energy sources from 30 per cent to 70 per cent by 2030.
Fogarty said that if MPAs are not introduced in parallel with legislation to allow for offshore wind farms then biodiversity will be left behind in an effort to solve the climate crisis.
He said: “We have a major ecological emergency on our hands and the Dáil has recognised that the climate crisis is one side, and the biodiversity crisis is the other side and so we can’t be pursuing one at the detriment to the other.
“Our worry here is that biodiversity is going to suffer in the aim to decarbonise when what we need to be doing is decarbonising and restoring natural ecosystems at the same time.”
A spokesman for the the Department of Housing and Local Government said: “The programme for government, Our Shared Future, contains a commitment to realise the outstanding target of 10 per cent coverage of our marine area as soon as is practicable, aiming for 30 per cent by 2030.
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“In this regard, informed by the extensive public consultation and the resulting information the department intends to begin developing legislation on the identification, designation and management of MPAs this year.”
