What will it take for Ireland to prioritise marine protection?

The Irish Government has developed a pattern of setting ambitious environmental targets, not delivering them, then seeking to merely negotiate the penalties 

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?

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.