Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Aquaculture Development: Discussion

4:30 pm

Mr. Donal Maguire:

I beg the Deputy's pardon. The Chairman raised that as well. Progress is being made in this regard although regrettably it is slow. While this is not something on which Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM, has the prime lead, we provide a lot of services to assist in that and we carry out the aquaculture profiling as part of that. It is grinding its way, slowly but surely, around the coast and we probably will see quite a lot of progress this year. Dungarvan Bay will have been completed, as will Clew Bay, and Lough Swilly should come through fairly quickly. The process is in place but it is proving to be extremely complex and no sooner does the system get through than some other hurdles have arisen. It looked, for example, as though Dungarvan Bay was ready to be licensed and then it suddenly was realised there were issues to do with archaeology and it was necessary to conduct an entire archaeological survey for national heritage to clear that hurdle. It has proven difficult to foresee in advance what are all the hurdles and just when one thinks one has gotten there, another hurdle had come up. At this stage, however, it is pretty well understood and it is getting there but even when the Natura 2000 issues have been resolved, there still is quite a gap between that and the determination of individual licence applications.

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