Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am struck by the parallels between this matter and that of forestry, and the work that was done with regard to time limits on the Forestry Bill 2013, which came before this committee. It is fair to say that there was not broad agreement on what kind of forestry we should have in Ireland and what was environmentally sustainable as regards forestry, but it was agreed that if one wanted to encourage people to get into forestry one must be able to grant felling licences in a particular period of time, and substantial work was done by the committee on Committee Stage, and more on Report Stage, to achieve a degree of certainty, which was a big step forward on what it was. If we, as a committee, could achieve that or at least point to that with regard to licensing, we would be doing a lot.

I was struck by what Ms Dubsky had to say with regard to the possibilities of producing a high-end product. The same goes for all sectors of food production in Ireland. We are good at developing for the mass market, but sometimes one wonders whether we are doing enough as a country to develop for the high-end market, which is clearly growing. Increasingly, consumers are worried about where their food is coming from, for their own health reasons but also for the health of their successors. If this planet is to be sustainable, consumers want to know that the food produced is sustainable. Not everybody is interested and not everybody who is interested can afford it, but many who are interested can afford it. I visited Brittany relatively recently and was struck by the fact that everything around Mont Saint-Michel was labelled. The lamb was labelled Mont Saint-Michel, the postcards were obviously Mont Saint-Michel and so was the cheese, but we do not do that in Ireland. There was an effort with Burren beef and Burren lamb, but that did not get very far. Maybe that means that what I am pointing to is pie-in-the-sky and cannot work. I do not fully understand, if it can work so well in other countries, why it cannot work here. I wonder what is being done with regard to labelling a sustainable product with iconic sights in Ireland that tourists increasingly want to come to, such as Galway Bay - viewed from the Cliffs of Moher, viewed from the Aran Islands or viewed from wherever - or Bantry Bay or Dingle Bay, and then getting a premium price for that. What is being done, what can be done and is there anybody looking into it? Should the Department be looking into funding the development of these brands or labels abroad?

On the fish farms, I would agree with what Deputy Ó Cuív had to say about what we saw in Scotland, particularly with regard to finfish, and how they were slightly taken aback by the scale of the proposals in Ireland. The shellfish sector in Scotland seems to be much more developed, and also with regard to ensuring that those who operate it have a degree of control over the market, that it is not so dominated by the multiples and that, through the use of co-operatives, they are able to exercise some degree of control. Regarding the contained farms, how much more expensive is it to produce fish out of these, and is there any evidence that consumers are interested in paying any more for it? Clearly, consumers are prepared to pay more for wild salmon caught at sea than for farmed salmon, but there is an issue about the labelling of that too. There was a fairly famous brand - one could get the fish at Dublin Airport - that was flogging off farmed salmon as wild salmon, but that is a different issue entirely. Is there any evidence that consumers are prepared to pay more and how economically sustainable are contained finfish farms?