Ms Tara McCarthy:

Senator Mulherin asked about the Bord Bia link and the remit of the two agencies. Bord Bia is the agency that is responsible for the marketing of all food and drink products. Our agency is the development agency. The marketing of seafood was transferred from BIM to Bord Bia six or seven years ago. However, we work very closely with Bord Bia. Two key areas of partnership are sustainability and innovation. In the case of sustainability, Ireland is in the unique position of having a national programme for its food under the title Origin Green. Looking at how that works in beef or dairy, there are quality assurance schemes that run from farm to fork in which Bord Bia looks at the traceability and so forth. BIM runs the quality assurance and traceability schemes in seafood. There was a remit for us to reformulate all of our schemes to ensure they were allowing Origin Green to communicate strongly for seafood. We have set up a market advisory group that specifically calls out what seafood buyers are seeking in sustainability and what our schemes need to achieve to be able to allow both our processors and Bord Bia make those claims on our behalf. We work in partnership in that way.

There is a second strong area of partnership. As I mentioned previously, we have an agenda of introducing a culture of innovation to the industry. We can do that from a technical perspective but if our insights are not informed by the market and the consumer, they could possibly be a distraction to people. We have set very clear partnerships with Bord Bia in which it helps us on the consumer and market insights and informs us on our innovation agenda, to ensure the advice we are giving to people is practical and relevant to them. In our seafood development centre we are in ongoing discussions. In the last number of months Bord Bia has launched a fantastic thinking house concept in Clanwilliam Court and we are asking it to have an outreach programme to our centres in Clonakilty so that its consumer insight is just a touch of a screen away. When processors go there they will have a seamless connection between Bord Bia and BIM on anything like that. It is a very close working relationship but both agencies have distinct and specific remits within it.

Michael Keatinge addressed the funding of harbours. With regard to aquaculture, we are not part of the licensing system. We are working with industry in the space of facilitating, guiding and advising it through that. There is nobody who has encountered that system who has not been frustrated. They would like it to work much faster, and we are part of that as well. We are in regular dialogue with the Marine Institute on the assessments and we have huge faith in the institute having the scientific advice. We would not presume to touch that in any way. We let those people do their jobs. The Minister has announced that he will undertake a review of the licensing system and we will facilitate any requests made of us. However, we work to our remit, and we are not a regulatory party in that system. What we do all the time is talk to both the Department and industry on the challenges, what is the right thing to do and what must be done so there are no surprises from anybody.

The Senator also asked about the Greencastle school. We are making a significant investment in Greencastle. Michael Keatinge is best placed to describe it.