The Irish government is considering scrapping a planned bill expanding marine protected areas (MPAs), instead accomplishing the same goal through changes to existing marine planning legislation.
The bill in question would designate 30 percent of Ireland’s territorial waters as MPAs in line with global goals, but some members of the Irish government have suggested that the nation’s Maritime Area Planning Act, which was enacted in 2021, could be revised and achieve the same goals, instead of requiring a standalone MPA bill.
Minister for Housing, Local Government, and Heritage of Ireland James Browne told the Irish Parliament in July that the decision on which legislative approach to take “will be based on which approach will allow for the earliest designation of an ecologically coherent network of MPAs to enable Ireland to meet its target of 30 percent MPA coverage of our maritime area by 2030.”
Jennifer Whitmore, a member of the Irish Parliament’s newly established Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs and a marine biologist by training, told SeafoodSource the scrapping of the MPA bill would be a “bad idea.” She said that an entirely new piece of legislation allows for a greater focus on protecting marine ecology, instead of attempting to shoehorn that focus into an existing legislative framework.
More specifically, Whitmore said she wants the new legislation to clearly outline detailed conservation measures and go through parliament so that it can be subject to the scrutiny and amendments that all new bills face.
“You can have marine parks and designated areas, but unless you change the activities, they are just paper parks,” she said.
Ireland currently has designated around 10 percent of its seas as MPAs, “but none of them mean anything,” Whitmore said.
“You [need] protective measures like no-take zones based on science and ecology. When you have those areas, you would have increased fishery stocks,” she said. “Long term, it will make for a much more robust marine sector. Irish governments tend to be short term over long term.”
Whitmore is not the first person to criticize the way in which the Irish government has dragged its feet on creating effective MPAs.
“Until 2023, Ireland was at the bottom of the ranking of E.U. countries for MPAs, and only thanks to new MPAs last year, it went from 2 percent to about 8 percent of its waters designated as MPAs,” Oceana Campaign Director for Marine Protection Nicolas Fournier said in early 2024. “So, not only did Ireland fail to meet the previous international UN target of 10 percent by 2020, but it will require immense and resolute efforts to meet the new 30 percent target by 2030 as endorsed by the government.”
Whitmore said it is only because of regulations set by the E.U. that Ireland has taken any action at all.
“Otherwise, we have completely mismanaged our marine and terrestrial biodiversity,” she said.
