Dr. Cecil Beamish:

There is a variety of issues. The issue with aquaculture is that the European Court of Justice ruled against Ireland. Most aquaculture takes place in Natura 2000 sites and Ireland had a broad negative judgment against it regarding licensed activities in Natura 2000 sites that covered aquaculture. The challenge was that no future licences could issue until a mechanism could be built to allow for compliant licensing with the Natura directives. This required the gathering of data sets in a variety of environmental factors, such as mapping and the identification of scientific interest in Natura 2000 sites. In many cases, this involves multi-year data on birds, mammals and other migratory elements operating in Natura 2000 sites. No further licences could issue. Detailed negotiations with the Commission went on for a long time on retaining the aquaculture in those Natura 2000 sites while the machinery and data were built up. National legislation was put in place to allow the continuation on the existing licences of the aquaculture activities in those areas, pending a determination on future licence obligations.

A major data gathering exercise went on over three or four years in all of those areas and the National Parks and Wildlife Service identified the specific scientific interests in those Natura 2000 areas that were to be protected. In 2012 and 2013, the first of the licences began to be produced in a way that met the compliance requirements for the Natura 2000 directives. At that point the Minister committed, following a review of aquaculture licensing, to clear the backlog on the bulk of aquaculture licensing by the end of this year. At this point, approximately 900 ministerial licence determinations have been made. Last year, the Minister committed to making 300 licence determinations and he delivered these. This is also the target for this year. By the end of this year, all of the backlog on shellfish aquaculture licensing should be cleared. There will always be new licences coming in but the backlog has built up as a result of the European Court of Justice judgment will be effectively cleared.

With regard to salmon farming, the salmon farming operators, who are much smaller in number, are working on environmental impact statements, which are an EU legal requirement before the licensing process can be advanced. The main operators have asked for more time to complete these statements.

The main operators wanted the original deadlines to be extended so that they could get the environmental impact statements, EISs, completed. It has been a long story. It has meant that those who were operating could continue to operate within the terms of their licences. However, the shellfish operators have now been determined, and their applications have been granted, not granted or amended. By the end of this year, we hope that this will be a historical discussion.

The Department produced a national strategic plan for sustainable aquaculture development, setting targets out to 2023. There is a seafood development programme in which there is a whole series of schemes to assist aquaculture development, and elements of shellfish aquaculture have been developing quite quickly. It has to be done in a sustainable way, however, taking account of all the other users and interested parties because it is State property that is being provided to these farms. The finfish part of the industry is developing its EISs, and this is the last remaining element.