Dr. Cecil Beamish:

They were not reports into the development of aquaculture but into the seafood sector. They include Food Wise 2025, which was produced 18 months to two years ago. The relevant recommendation was to carry out the review on licensing, which is on the way. There was the National Plan for Sustainable Aquaculture Development, which was produced just over a year ago. It also had a recommendation on the review of licensing, which is under way. There are no other reviews that I am aware of. They were not specifically reports on the licensing process, which they did not go into. They were about the development of the sector. There are no reviews in the time period which we have not implemented.

It would be useful for the Deputy to try to understand the process. Then he could understand the timeframes. After 2007, there was no possibility to license aquaculture in a manner compliant with the judgment and the EU directives. The reason was that the infrastructure did not exist to do it. We did not have the scientific data on the bays that had just been designated, the conservation objectives that were to be protected in the bays or the ability to do the appropriate assessment. All the infrastructure had to be built. The licences in question were given during the ten years that followed the 1997 Act, mostly between 1998 and 2000. The industry got licences for ten years. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, we had an ECJ judgment and it happened that those licences were falling for renewal during that crucial period. There was no ability to make a decision.

The Commission has not progressed in taking daily fines or requiring the aquaculture to be taken out of the water on the basis that the future licensing will be done in compliance with the habitats and birds directive. The national guarantee existed from the 1997 legislation to allow the operators to continue operating. People have not been stopped from operating. They were there and they continue to operate. What was required was that any decision that was made on a renewal of a licence would be done in a manner compliant with the requirements under European legislation.

There were discussions with the Commission in 2008 and with the NPWS and others who had roles in it as to how we could reach a position in which we had the machinery to consider licensing. In the meantime, everybody who had been operating could continue to operate. The only way forward was if the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine took on the full role of collecting all the data in the Natura 2000 sites, and that is what the Department did. The data are as valid for anybody else who wants to license something else in a Natura 2000 site as they are for aquaculture. They are a national asset for anybody else who wants to do licensing in those areas. They can use the data. The data detail what is in the areas, what is to be conserved, where it is to be conserved, etc.

The Department started what is probably the biggest data collection in the marine environment that has happened anywhere right across all the relevant bays. In some cases where we were dealing with protection areas for migrating birds that may arrive for only two to four weeks in the year, we had to build up a time series of data. We could not make a judgment on whether putting oyster trellises in a certain area would affect a particular species of bird. There was no way of speeding up the process. To be compliant, we had to collect the data. The data had to be built up over a period. Only when we had an adequate amount of data could we get the conservation objectives specified by the NPWS. Then we could do the appropriate assessment. This understanding must be taken on board.