Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Hayes for his presentation. He mentioned that 20 January is the deadline for submissions from stakeholders. I presume the Department has made a submission based on what he said when it was asked for its views from the Commission in the autumn. Can Mr. Hayes share with us what was the Department's opinion? Are the submissions from the stakeholders, who would include more than likely those in the industry, being made via the Department or directly to the Commission? Has Mr. Hayes any idea of the number of submissions made and what they may reflect? Obviously, they would relate to the de minimis regulation and that affects every element of state aid rules, whether it be funding through the IDA, Enterprise Ireland or any of the funding streams from Europe, and there is nothing new in that. The new element is the increase in funding from Europe under the seafood development fund and there will be a knock-on consequence to have an increased fund available from the Department as well. In terms of the economic benefit of the fund over the lifetime of the programme, has any analysis been done of a breakdown of where the money will be spent, in other words, the sectoral elements of spend and the beneficial consequences of it in terms of the growth of the industry?
The aquaculture sector is one of the strands that can be funded from the programme. In light of some of the concerns of local communities around the country, how will they fit in with the funding mechanisms? If there are local concerns, they will have to feed into the mix of funding programmes based on business plans alone. Will a social cost benefit analysis be carried out on the unintended consequences, given that it is set out in the 2013 public spending code that social benefit analysis must be taken into consideration as well? Presumably, there would have to be some level of awareness and some way of building the social concerns of communities into whatever funding is made available.

For example, in Galway, Donegal and Mayo, where there are plans to develop salmon-farming facilities off the coast, there have been suggestions, whether scientifically proven or not, that these enterprises could be to the detriment of local communities. Will those types of social costs be taken into account when it comes to deciding how the funding should be used? Where investment comes from private sector interests, including multinational organisations, the main concern, at the end of the day, is their own stakeholders, who are the shareholders of the company. Their bottom line is profit.

There are issues to be addressed in terms of how these proposals can be implemented in a beneficial way while ensuring the concerns of local communities are not diminished. There are genuine concerns about how this money will be spent if it does go towards aquaculture. The State, which should have the best interests of citizens and local communities at heart, needs to be very much aware of this. There is a lot of money to be made in the sector. Salmon farming is one of the cornerstones of what the Minister is driving in terms of the seafood element of Food Harvest 2020 and his efforts to develop outputs. At the same time, we must be very much aware of the consequences that go along with that. I might be going off on a tangent, but it is very much related to how the money is spent. Europe will have an eye on that and we may well see complaints from local communities to the European Commission in regard to how the money is carved up. Perhaps the delegates might enlighten us as to whether there has been any discussion with the Commission on these matters, particularly regarding the aquaculture element of the seafood development programme.