Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Ó Murchú has got to the nub of the issue. I was shocked by a comment made by Mr. Mac Giolla Bhríde. He was told by civil servants not to comply with the law, which has been in place since 1973. It appears offered him this advice because they did not want him to disabuse people of the simple belief that they owned the seaweed. The people who knew the position did not tell the harvesters, which allowed everyone to live in cloud cuckoo land, believing that the harvester owned the material he was selling to the factory. After years of being led to believe this was the case, we have learned that Arramara Teoranta and the Department were conniving to keep people in the dark about the real position. People suddenly woke up to find that not only do they not own the seaweed but that a company is to be awarded the harvesting licence and will be able to bring in anybody it wishes to harvest the material the harvesters believed they had owned for years. While that may not be the legal position, it is the human position. I am being told in a committee of Oireachtas Éireann that this approach was perpetrated by senior civil servants who told Mr. Mac Giolla Bhríde not to apply the law. We know it is not legally acceptable for anyone to tell anyone else not to apply the law.