I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. Flooding is affecting so many lives and property right across the country. In my county there is seaweed harvesting in the coastal areas and an application in to MARA, which is the maritime regulatory agency. Seaweed has a very important role to play in coastal erosion and helps the coastal areas maintain their foreshore, and this is causing huge concern. I have studied in detail this application that has been submitted to MARA and it is incredibly confusing. It appears that the application process and the pre-consultation aspects were complete over ten years ago, in 2014. Much of this application is built on some of the consultations that happened during this period. I want to make it very clear and to put it on the record of the Dáil that seaweed is fundamentally important for coastal areas in terms of flood management. We need a coastal management strategy. We need to ensure that we do not grant a licence that could potentially harvest up to 40,000 tonnes of seaweed from the coast of Galway and Mayo, which is what is proposed. I believe very few people in this House even realise that, such is the lack of information about these applications. I also want to raise the pace of the planning process for flood reliefs. I welcome the flood relief in Crossmolina, which will have a big impact on the town, but countless other towns still do not have a planning application even submitted - in Enniscorthy, Midleton and all those places. I urge the Minister of State to do everything necessary to streamline the planning process. Flood defences are critical infrastructure, and it is simply intolerable that a planning process can go on for so many years. There are families across Ireland who, in the depths of winter, in the nights of storms, cannot sleep, such is the level of worry and stress. I urge the Minister of State to prioritise the planning process, to adequately staff it, to adequately staff An Coimisiún Pleanála and to reform the planning process to ensure that bogus objectors are not allowed to submit. We have a Bill at the moment, which I urge the Minister of State to prioritise and support, whereby only those with a material interest in a planning application can make an objection. At the moment, if a farmer in Donegal is applying for planning permission for a slurry tank, there may be an objection from Cork, Wicklow or Wexford that has no interest. This is causing major delays in the system, and I ask the Minister of State to ensure that that can no longer be tolerated. It should not be tolerated. It is also important to say that many of these planning applications are hundreds and thousands of pages long. We should streamline that because in such a long application, in an application that spans thousands of words, pages and documents, it is leaving us ripe for judicial reviews. That is another major aspect holding progress back on these issues. I wish the Minister of State well and look forward to working with him on these projects over the years ahead.

Sentiment score: 0.16