Dr. Stephen Hynes:

I am delighted to be here. I will talk about some of the work we do in the socioeconomic marine research unit in NUI Galway, which is relevant to the work of the sub-committee, particularly with regard to the proposed report on strategies for promoting sustaining coastal and island communities. Six issues were identified and we have done a lot of work on two which are very relevant - namely, socioeconomic profiling of coastal communities, and the provision of key statistics on the different marine sectors. The four industries of interest here are aquaculture, fisheries, sea angling and tourism.

I will speak about the presentation slides, which I hope members have in front of them. I will give an overview of some of the work we do, particularly in regard to the profiling we do and how we define what we call "ocean and coastal economies". I will speak a bit about the marine sectors and the data sources we use to define those sectors. As far as I can, I will give a bit of a regional perspective and I will speak about some other work we do that is relevant to the sub-committee.

Much of our work is funded through a Beaufort marine research award, under the marine research sub-programme of the National Development Plan 2007-2013. That award was granted for work in this area following consultation in regard to foresight exercises as part of the development of the Sea Change strategy. A gap identified at that time was the lack of information in Ireland in regard to the value of marine sectors, the numbers employed, coastal communities and what is going on in the coastal economy. On the back of that, the unit was set up in NUI Galway.

We have been attempting to develop a methodology whereby we can get statistics together on ocean-related activity. We define the ocean economy as including economic activity which indirectly or directly uses the ocean as an input or produces a good that is used in some marine-related field. From that, we distinguish the coastal economy, which includes any economic activity that takes place in some predefined spatial area adjacent to the sea - along some coastal strip.

In terms of the ocean economy, activity can take place anywhere on the island of Ireland. For example, one could have a marine engineering consultancy in the midlands. It does not have to be in the coastal domain. In the coastal profiling we have done, we have tried to define statistical coastal regions from which we could get data together. There is a coastal definition used by EUROSTAT and that is at the NUTS 3 level. On the map, it is shown as the green area extending out to the shoreline. That is what EUROSTAT defines as the coastal economy for Europe and it has put together statistics in regard to that area. However, someone in Ballinasloe or Nenagh will not really consider himself or herself coastal. It is a very broad definition in the Irish case. We have looked to see whether we can refine that definition in terms of the coastal area and what statistics we can get together. We looked at coastal counties - the counties adjacent to the shore - which is the cream-coloured area on the map, and at defining a coastal electoral district, ED - an ED adjacent to the shore - to reduce it to a smaller but a much more relevant scale, although it is much more difficult to get data for. We have produced a report. I will not go into this, but I refer to the different sources and the different spatial scales on which we can get data. We can get a lot of information on unemployment levels, population levels and other population-related statistics from the census data down to the ED level. We can look to see if there is any difference between the coastal EDs and the national average in EDs or we can go up to the county level. It is more difficult when we are trying to get economic data and trying to define the value of activity taking place at the coastal ED level, because it is not generated by the Central Statistics Office. In terms of GDP, one can get that at the NUTS 3 level. One can get income per capita at county level but even at that level, it comes with a health warning from the Central Statistics Office. We have attempted to produce estimates at the coastal county and shoreline electoral district levels. These are just estimates which are based on the share of the population in these areas as a percentage of the county or at the NUTS 3 level. If we talk about the shoreline ED level, that is about 25% of the total GDP produced in the country, as a rough estimate.

The ocean economy is purely marine-related activity. I have some figures, to which I will return. We are talking about 13 sectors, including marine services, shipping, tourism, hi-tech marine commerce, marine resources, fisheries, aquaculture, seafood processing, by-products such as seaweed-related products, and renewable energy. There is also a marine manufacturing sector which we distinguish. We can get the statistics on some of these straight from the CSO in terms of the annual services inquiry or the census of industrial production, but in regard to what we refer to as these emerging industries in the marine sector, that data cannot be got in that it is buried in some other sector and it is very difficult to pull out that information from the CSO. We then have confidentiality issues if the industry is very small. Data is a major issue here. We did a company survey for those small emerging sectors when we were developing methodology to get this data together. We went out and found these companies.

The other aspect I should highlight here that is of importance is marine tourism, which we estimate is one of the biggest, or the most highly valued, sectors in the marine economy, and yet it is very difficult to get data in this area. We have estimates of the total tourism value from Fáilte Ireland. It has estimates ranging from 3% to 10%, depending on how broadly one defines marine tourism. In 2002, a survey done on behalf of the Marine Institute asked visitors how much of their activity was marine-related. It was able to estimate the value at that point in time of marine tourism expenditure in Ireland.

It is a particularly difficult one to get an accurate reading on and yet, in terms of rural and coastal communities, it is probably one of the most relevant. When people think of the marine economy they think of fishing and aquaculture, but shipping and marine tourism have a bigger share of the overall marine economy, even though fishing, aquaculture, seafood processing and so forth are obviously vital to rural coastal communities.

In terms of figures, the marine economy in 2007 was valued at €3.4 billion, which was approximately 1.4% of gross value added and equated to approximately 1% of national gross domestic product. In total, the sector employs approximately 17,000 full-time equivalent individuals. I must point out that we are operating with a time lag here. These figures are quite out of date, representing, as they do, the situation in 2007, which was the peak of the business cycle in Ireland, although in one sense, it is a good baseline year to use. We are currently updating these figures but the most recent year for our profiling is still only 2010.

Interestingly, if one looks at the share of activities, marine services are most relevant in terms of value, at 66%. However, in terms of employment, the marine-resource-related sub-sector has the highest share, which includes fisheries, aquaculture, seafood processing and so forth. Those areas of activity are the most important from an employment perspective. These are what we refer to as "established" marine sectors and are the sectors one readily thinks of when one thinks of marine activity. They account for about 94% of all marine-related activity. There are also what are known as "emerging" sectors, which were highlighted in the EU's Blue Growth strategy as areas with high potential for growth in the future. While we are in the middle of updating these figures, it is interesting to note that these emerging sectors have seen growth between 2007 and 2010, despite the fact that that was a very difficult economic period in general. Growth has been recorded in both turnover and employment numbers, whereas some of the more established sectors have seen a decline in the same period. However, growth was not recorded in all of the emerging sectors. Our best estimates indicate that marine tourism, for example, declined in that period. However, general tourism figures have improved recently and one can assume the same is true for marine tourism.

The regional distribution patterns are quite interesting. If one looks at marine economic activity at county level, counties such as Donegal, which have quite low rates of income per capitavis-à-visthe rest of the country, have some of the highest shares, in terms of value, of marine economic activity nationally. Of course, that relates back to the marine resource element and the very strong fisheries and seafood processing industries in such counties.