Ireland’s increasingly equivocal relationship with environmental issues has once again been thrown into sharp focus, as the European Commission has begun legal proceedings against the State.
European Commission patience has finally run out with Ireland’s failure to deliver marine protected areas as part of its legal commitments under the EU’s Habitats and Birds Directives. Ireland has been obliged since 2012 to establish a network of these areas of marine conservation to protect the EU’s most threatened habitat types and species.
The Government has two months to respond. But, given the environmental brinkmanship successive governments have engaged in when it comes to environmental targets, few would bet on that response amounting to the step change this issue demands.
In fact, a concerning pattern appears to be emerging whereby ambitious environmental targets are set by the Government, not delivered, and when faced with the financial and environmental consequences, the instinct seems to be to negotiate the penalties rather than take the necessary action.
Even the likelihood of a fine from Brussels of up to €28bn for the certain failure to meet our climate targets by 2030 has not been met by more urgent or more innovative ways of meeting those targets to avoid paying the fine, but by exploring ways of converting fines into ‘investment orders’ offset against renewable energy investments.
Even with the largest financial sanction in the history of the State looming, the instinct is to find a workaround rather than to play our part in cooling an overheating planet.
But the pattern of responding only to external pressure raises the more troubling question as to what happens when there is no significant external pressure, such as the EU, to drive the State to act?
Nowhere is that question more pointed than in the Government’s ongoing failure to introduce domestic marine protected areas legislation, separate from its requirements under the EU’s Birds and Habitats Directive. This once-in-a-generation piece of legislation was first mooted in 2008 and almost introduced under the previous Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Green government before being rerouted under this Government as a proposed amendment to existing marine spatial planning legislation.
Unlike its carbon targets, Ireland faces no financial penalty or legal sanction for failing to reach its 30% marine protected areas designation by 2030 ambition. The infringement proceedings may force movement on the directive obligations. However, on the broader domestic legislation, the only requirement the Government act is because it is the right thing to do — historically the weakest motivator in Ireland’s environmental policymaking.
In considering marine protected areas legislation, it’s important to understand why it failed at the last minute under the previous government. It was reported concerns came from the Department of Environment and Climate and the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine, which had concerns around aspects of the legislation in the context of offshore energy needs and fishing sector interests.
But crucially, both of these sectors, to a greater or lesser degree, acknowledge the need for marine protected areas legislation.
At a recent Oireachtas committee meeting on marine protected areas, both the fishing industry and environmental groups were in agreement any new marine protected areas needed to be brought forward collaboratively, with environmental groups pointing out the creation of well-managed marine protected areas allow fish stocks to recover, with various examples globally showing they can bolster fish populations and fisheries viability into the future.
Sorley McCaughey: ‘This Government still has the chance to act, not because Brussels demands it, not because the financial penalties have become impossible to ignore, but simply because it is the right thing to do.’
The offshore renewable energy industry needs the certainty marine protected areas legislation would bring to allow them to plan and identify offshore locations. Environmentalists and the offshore renewable industry are ad idem on this, an uncommon scenario the Government should not take for granted.
So in the context of a Government seemingly indifferent to the threat of financial sanction, what will it take to move the protection of our seas to the top of the priority list? The extinction of the mackerel, already under significant threat due to overfishing ? Or the puffin — already on the red list of highly endangered sea birds in Ireland?
Or that in decades to come we might look back on these years as the last great era of basking sharks in Irish waters, and wonder whether their disappearance was the price of our failure to protect our seas?
A stated priority for Ireland’s presidency of the EU is to progress the EU Ocean Act — a landmark piece of EU legislation that brings together various EU strands of ocean management. This focus is welcome, but to progress EU ocean legislation while dragging its heels on key domestic ocean legislation is politically cynical.
But despite the numerous delays, strong marine protected areas legislation remains within reach. There is broad consensus as to its importance across key stakeholders, and recent ministerial statements have committed to introduce it this year.
This Government still has the chance to act, not because Brussels demands it, not because the financial penalties have become impossible to ignore, but simply because it is the right thing to do. That should be reason enough.
Sorley McCaughey is advocacy and strategy adviser with Fair Seas.
Fair Seas is hosting the second World Ocean Week Conference in Cork on Wednesday, June 3, bringing together ocean advocates, fishing communities, Government, industry and key stakeholders. For more information visit fairseas.ie