Mr. Jason Whooley:

I will try to address the issues raised by Deputy Ó Cuív, the first of which was also raised by Deputy Ferris, namely, the involvement of inshore fishermen in aquaculture and ranching. The example of how oyster fishing in Tralee Bay is managed, as mentioned by Deputy Ferris, is an excellent one. The operation is professionally managed and there is a good working relationship among the individual fishermen. It also has an onshore facility, from a hatchery perspective. It is a good example of what can be done in terms of inshore fishermen moving from what is traditionally seen as wild fisheries to managed fisheries. Similarly, the mussel farming operation in Roaring Water Bay mentioned by Deputy Ó Cuív is an excellent example of inshore fishermen, side by side with in-shore fishing, successfully growing mussels and supplementing their incomes. There are other examples of this around the coast. The difficulty for an inshore fisherman or small group of fishermen is our onerous, and rightly so in some respects, licensing system through which they must navigate in order to obtain a licence to farm. I am sure Dr. Connolly will have more to say on the SACs, Natura 2000 and their implications.

Deputy Ó Cuív raised the issue of seaweed. I agree absolutely that seaweed offers significant potential. As I mentioned earlier, the BIM strategy to be launched in a number of weeks will have a specific emphasis on seaweed. We successfully managed to farm seaweed in Dingle and Castletownbere in the past couple of years, through local inshore fishermen growing it. That has proved very successful. My colleague, Mr. Donal Maguire, might deal with that issue specifically.

I will now address another question raised by Deputy Ó Cuív on scaling and upsizing and how that sits with the traditional businesses around our coast. The Deputy is absolutely correct, the traditional small businesses which have developed niches in the marketplace for their products and employ low numbers of people are critically important not only to the coastal communities but also to the future of the Irish seafood sector. We have an absence of the larger companies that operate in other sectors. We do not have companies on the scale of Glanbia or the Kerry Group. There is no seafood company in Ireland with a turnover in excess of €50 million. That lack of scale impacts negatively on our ability to deal on the global market. Many of our competitors have companies of that scale and in simple terms they are able to out-muscle us in the marketplace. That is a real challenge in the market day-in, day-out which we need to address. We need to develop companies of scale in parallel with our existing niche companies. Last year we were fortunately able to get four companies to collaborate together and go to the Chinese market as one rather than compete against each other in that market. Companies from Kilmore Quay, Castletownbere, Donegal and Mallow in County Cork came together as a group to access the Chinese market. That has been very effective.

I will now respond to Deputy Ferris's question on the onshore growing of salmon. We have successfully grown onshore species such as turbot. We also grow onshore species such as perch in Tipperary and Monaghan. The challenge with salmon is that the world production of salmon is 2 million tonnes per annum. Of that 2 million tonnes, approximately 10,000 tonnes to 15,000 tonnes is produced on land. The reason is simple, while it is technically feasible, it does not make sense financially. The added difficulty for a country like Ireland is finding large sites proximate to the coast in which one could situate these cages. Another factor is the cost of energy and recent statistics show we have the third highest electricity costs in the OECD. The cost of electricity for the pumping machines would make it even more difficult for an Irish operation to succeed. That is not to say we are not looking at this possibility or that further down the line it has potential. In my opinion it will be five to ten years, at best, before such a project would be financially viable.

My colleague, Donal Maguire, will deal with seaweed and will comment further on salmon.