Dr. Cecil Beamish:

Through BIM, the State has funded a study into recirculating aquaculture systems, RAS, and there is a lot of international research activity looking at it. There are a number of technological challenges that will need to be overcome before economic viability can be proven. At the end of the day, it is a private sector enterprise that only operates on a profit basis. If it is not viable it does not happen. To incentivise these types of developments, the Minister increased the grants under the EMFF sustainable aquaculture scheme in December 2016 to the maximum possible rate of 50% for applications in 2017.

He also doubled the maximum grant amount permissible. The incentivisation to do the research and to look at this is in the schemes we have but that does not mean it has proven viability. It is a private sector industry. We do not have applications on hand. We have applications for sea farming but we do not have applications on hand for somebody to do a commercial recirculating aquaculture system.