Mr. Brendan Price:

It is essential that decision-making be at a remove from the Department and Bord Iascaigh Mhara, which is promoting these developments, including the Galway cages. An essential component of this to address the backlog and adequately assess the Natura sites in particular is that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is adequately resourced to participate in the decision-making process. Otherwise it will not happen and there will be a bigger backlog.

With respect to the cages and the figure of 5,000 or 7,000 tonnes of biomass, looking at some of the licences over the years, there is a range of biomass figures, as it is in the latter stages of growth that the fastest profits are generated. Unfortunately, what would happen without proper regulation is the exception would become the rule. Already, some of these operators, including the two in Bantry to which reference has been made, have been overstocked for three years running and have had a huge escape. It is a great danger and can only be addressed by adequate regulation. As to the finfish farm cages, essentially, the fish are being fed in a toilet. These chemicals are going in and they are dissipating into the environment. It is a throwback to the old days of "dilution is the solution to pollution". Some of these chemicals are directed at crustaceans. I cannot make the connection myself, but it is certainly worth exploring. It is probably the reason many crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters are missing from certain areas.

Deputy Pringle mentioned the mid-term review. Mr. Flynn is all too familiar with the loss of European fishery funds to the aquaculture sector. There is every danger that something like this could happen again. A mid-term review will be set for the programme if it is approved. It might be worth underlining that it needs approval.

I find multi-trophic aquaculture fascinating. It is almost like science fiction, but so are many other things. I will leave the committee with an image. The Irish Sea used to be a multi-species fishery and we sought multi-species and multi-annual management plans for it.

Now it has almost become a single-species fishery. If we go in the direction to which Ms Dubsky pointed, namely, using local technology and knowledge rather than the big-bang approach, perhaps there will be opportunities.

Mr. Ewing spoke far more eloquently than I could on what is happening with the finfish farms but I will refer to the operator I mentioned at the start. The operator credits the operation with €15 million for the Irish economy. The plan credits it with €50 million. There is something of an anomaly there. Marine Harvest in Chile acknowledged it was overstocking cages and over-using antibiotics and it had to cut its operations to a great degree, with the loss of 1,000 jobs. If that is the way the large-scale operations are going, we have to ask whether this is what will happen to us or whether we can avoid it through judicious input at this point.