Dr. Cecil Beamish:

Deputy McConalogue asked how many of the licences we have renewed since the new system got up and running. The answer is that 600 licence decisions have been made under the new system. He asked if there were areas outside of Natura. There were but they are limited. Bantry Bay is the largest non-Natura area; most of the rest are Natura areas. We dealt with Bantry Bay in 2012 to try to clear the decks of the non-Natura areas before we got into the Natura ones.

He asked me about Scotland and the ECJ. I cannot answer that. The Deputy would have to ask the Commission that question. I do not know the specifics of the situation.

The Deputy talked about finfish and salmon. The salmon situation is a little different because under the environmental impact directives, an environmental impact statement has to be produced for each salmon application. There are only 38 finfish licences. There are only one or two new ones so the rest are operating as they were under their old licences. An environmental impact statement has to be produced and there are only one or two of those on hand and they are only on hand about a couple of weeks. We are awaiting environmental impact statements on the rest before we can advance the renewal process and the decisions on those applications.

The growth in salmon I talked about in my opening statement has occurred in the context of people operating under their existing licences. There are estimates that we may get to 19,000 tonnes for 2017 but it is an estimate at this stage. It was 16,300 tonnes in 2016 and 12,000 tonnes in 2012. People have been operating under the licences they have.

The Deputy talked about the salmon industry in Norway and Scotland. There are some things happening there which are different. For the past five years, salmon production in Norway has plateaued. It has been pretty static for the past five years and equally so in Scotland. In Norway, there are essentially no new licences in the existing areas. There are some possibilities for what they call green licences where one is using a new technology or new species or for going offshore into deeper water. They are beginning to hit some limits in terms of their capacity to grow. Salmon production in Scotland has been static for the past five years as well. There are things happening to people and the story is evolving from where it was which was one of rapid growth.

In terms of the 600 applications we are targeting to decide over the next 24 months, the estimate is that about 40% will be new applications that are on hand and 60% will be renewals. That is an estimate. I do not have detail on it but that is what people are saying.

I will address the issue of newspapers, which seems to be a big issue, as it was last year when we appeared before the committee. The legislation is very simple. It says the applicant should publish in a newspaper circulating in the vicinity of the location. We cannot publish in every provincial and local newspaper. I do not know the total number but there are up to seven in some bigger counties. We have tended to pick the biggest in a county. We discussed the Inishowen issue in detail. It may well be that that model has to be reviewed, for example, if there are new technologies. In new aquaculture legislation, it will have to be done differently. One of the alternatives is to publish in national newspapers so we would not have this issue, but that is not a very satisfactory either.