Mr. Donal Maguire:

I have a fairly good note of the questions and will attempt to go through them. I will answer Deputy Ó Cuív’s questions first which included many of those points. To answer his specific point, the application remains outstanding so on that basis we are pursuing the project and await the Minister’s determination. He also mentioned that several salmon farm licences have run their course and are awaiting consideration for renewal under the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006. It is not an ideal situation but it does provide a legal cover to continue to operate and that is the important point. With regard to the scale of the project we have been discussing I am very familiar with the Scottish salmon farming industry having worked in it for many years.

I am very aware of how it operates. A water body the size of Galway Bay on the west coast of Scotland would already have 30,000 or 40,000 tonnes of salmon production. Galway Bay was unusual in not having any production which made it possible to have a large operation. While in Scotland there may not be a single operator in one location at that scale, within a water body of that size there would be multiples of that level of production.

There are now two farms operating on the island of Faroe in Norway that are bigger than the one we have proposed. Already the technology is moving along and other countries have moved to consider this. What might have been seen as an adventurous approach is becoming commonplace in other countries.

In answer to the questions about storm damage, fortuitously during the worst of the storms the Christmas before last we had a waverider buoy located on the sites which gave us direct measured information on the real wave climate during that one in 100 years storm. Reassuringly, the wave climate was within a couple of centimetres of what had been predicted in the environmental impact study. On that basis the equipment that was specified in the study, all things being equal, should have been up to the job of containing the fish and surviving the storms. What happened was what we predicted would happen and the equipment proposed in those studies would have been specified to deal with a wave climate of that magnitude. We have real, heavy duty, factual evidence because the measuring devices were on site.

Deputy Ferris asked some very searching questions about recirculating aquaculture systems, RAS, or pump ashore systems as they are commonly known. BIM is very much abreast of what is happening in that area. We have several systems operating in Ireland already. This boils down to whether we can have large-scale seawater systems for the production of big volumes of table fish. We already have very successful RAS-type systems for the production of juvenile salmon. High value juvenile or small volume fish work very well in these systems. BIM has grant-aided several of them and we are very pleased with their operation. We have recently assisted in the production of two major studies, one a feasibility study by an individual who is considering establishing one of these farms and another a theoretical study. We are finding that the technology for large-scale food production in these systems is not yet at a point where it can be seen either as reliable or as economically viable. We are watching it very closely, if we think there is an opportunity there we will immediately get involved in it.

To respond to Deputy McNamara’s questions, I have mentioned Scotland.