Dr. Cecil Beamish:

In the report one will see the annexes that have detailed flowcharts on the different steps that are legally required to grant a licence. They are all there because they are legally required to be there. We cannot remove them. It is difficult to see how one can fit with the six-month time limit yet meet the legal requirements. Those are the sorts of issues that are being considered.

The report talks about the pre-application process. Let me outline one of the issues. I think the Department started out being very helpful to aquaculture applicants because it is a relatively new industry and people may not submit full or complete applications, site maps would have to be sorted out and other things would have to be sorted out. We have not traditionally dealt with it in the way that a planning authority would do so and return an application to the applicant if a comma or full stop was missing. That has not been the culture up to now. Part of the implication of not having that culture is that things take longer due to sorting out the applications, working with the applicants to source site maps, which they would not have necessarily, marine mapping, surveying, etc.

One of the recommendations is that there would be a much stricter pre-application process. One of the considerations is whether BIM would take on the role of assistant. I am thinking in terms of farm advisers and people who help people to complete applications in the agriculture sphere. If BIM takes on that role then it cannot be involved in the post-application processes. We, in the Department, primarily work with two agencies - BIM and the Marine Institute. The Marine Institute advises us on scientific and technical matters and BIM advises us on development and other technical aspects of the industry. For example, when we need to get the underwater archaeology done we would work through BIM to get those surveys done. If BIM were to be involved in the pre-application process it could not legally get involved in post-application processes. If we took on that recommendation today we would weaken the ability to deal with the existing backlog as the measure would take one of the players out of the game. Nothing is straightforward but that is life. If we got past the backlog of existing licences then one could move. I think we would generally favour a much clearer and stronger pre-application process because it takes a lot of time to straighten out applications.