There is a widespread belief in the public that we need radical democratic reform, which was promised by the Government. I will repeat the question I asked earlier of how the Government can tally a commitment to radical democratic reform of these Houses and democracy in the country with the imposition of a guillotine on the Bill dealing with the abolition of the Seanad, which is being debated this week. It will be guillotined and pushed through in just one week while we need a wide-ranging and thorough debate on democratic reform in the country. Will the Minister explain this?

We are all aware of the need in this country to shift to renewable energies very quickly for environmental and other reasons. The Minister may have noted significant coverage of the issue of applications for big wind energy projects. Given the questions on the environmental aspects, the economic benefit to the State, the efficiency of wind energy and the many other concerns of people, when will the foreshore and marine area development Bill be brought forward? When will the promised offshore renewable energy development plan be published? The Minister knows that there are several very controversial and large wind energy projects, not least the plan for 145 turbines in Dublin Bay. We need to know the legislative framework in which these applications will be assessed with the participation of the public.

I agree with the Deputy on the need for radical reform of how our democracy operates and this Government is determined to carry that out. We have already done a number of things, including ending corporate donations, introducing gender quotas and a proposal to abolish the Seanad and change the function of the Dáil to make it more efficient and downsize it. We have significantly reduced the cost of running this House and the Government in general, including ministerial expenses and so on. That effort will continue through the life of this Government, and a major part of it is the proposal to have a referendum asking the people for their verdict on whether we need two Houses in this Parliament. In my view, we do not. My understanding is that no guillotine is proposed on that legislation until Thursday, so we should see how the debate goes between now and then and how many speakers wish to contribute. There is no decision to close the debate until Thursday at the earliest and we are sitting late this evening to facilitate as many speakers as possible.

We have some really ambitious thinking in Ireland with regard to wind projects, not only in how we produce renewable energy for our own grid but also in an ambition to export large volumes of green energy into the UK, which will pay for that energy. There is already a memorandum of understanding in place for the UK to import green energy from Ireland, which can be subsidised and come from projects in various parts of Ireland that have been through a robust foreshore process. I and many others are excited by that project and we strongly support it.