Dr. Cecil Beamish:

It could not have happened without going through the process because European law determined what needed to be done and there was no option to do it in any other way. Aquaculture is an evolving thing and we have only been engaged in it for a couple of generations, compared with farming in which we have been engaged for 2,500 years. It is rapidly evolving globally, and the future will probably not look like aquaculture looks today. There will be new species and new technologies and at the moment we are seeing significant interest in seaweed farming, which is evolving for a variety of uses. The species that will be farmed in the future will vary. The industry started with salmon, mussels and oysters, but it will evolve significantly from that, especially in the context of food security requirements. Globally, aquaculture provides about 50% of what wild capture fish provide at the moment and the projections are for this figure to go higher than 50%. Ireland has a role to play in that.