Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-25 ============================================================ Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare I have to second that. She is a dear friend and Mr. Percy Foster as well, who is also present. I do not know the other person; I apologise. I thank Senator Noonan for his understanding. He is right; it is down to resources. However, just putting in a deadline for those issues does not put compulsion on the Government or the agency to tool up to meet that. It just requires a decision. Sadly, while the decision is the right thing to do, it may not be the ultimate result. The work may not get done in the time and we will end up with a refusal, which will have further delays. The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste made it very clear in the programme for Government that the next number of years are about delivery. We have plenty of legislation. We have been working hard on that body of legislation and the Senator contributed to that in his time as a Minister of State. It is now about getting decisions taken and getting it out. It is about resources and sweating the assets that are already there. I am confident that the Senator takes the overall statement of Government intent to deliver in respect of these large projects and large employers whereby they cannot be bound up forever and a day in relation to licences. The Senator is right that the issues are there. We have issues in MARA, ALAB, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine regarding issuance of aquacultural licensing. It is a process issue that has built up over time. We need to refine the legislation and we are doing that on this one but we are giving that flexibility in order that we do not end up having a hard deadline that forces going back all the way through the process. The point I reflected on earlier is industry and other licensees have some way to go to in understanding the new realities because heretofore, they had certain delays on their side; the clock stopped and in some cases, license applications were not validated until all the information was there. Again, that is very different. The planning application has been developed so well. It is the gold standard in terms of everybody understanding it. However, what we are trying to do on this one has the capacity to deliver and of course, if it does not, that has to be addressed. The Deputy is right in terms of the allocation of resources at the end of the day, and based on the approach that the Government has taken, the supports and resources will be there to meet that demand. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-25