Dr. Cecil Beamish:

The Department owns and operates six fishery harbour centres around the country at Killybegs, Rossaveale, Dingle, Castletownbere, Dunmore East and Howth. Almost 90% of commercial fish stocks are landed at those six harbours and they were designed to facilitate the offshore fishing fleet. At the moment, as the Deputy will be aware, significant investment is going into Killybegs which will almost double the landing space and there is significant development in Castletownbere which is responding to the very rapid growth of landings of seafood into Castletownbere in the last five or six years, or more. There is also a project which is to take place next year in Howth.

The Department is engaged directly in those projects. It also runs a programme to assist smaller works at the local authority harbours around the coast, of which there are very many, as the Deputy said. The primary responsibility for those harbours rests with the local authorities, in the first instance, and with the parent Department in the second instance. The local authorities are asked each year to advertise the projects they want to develop in their county, and grants are awarded on the basis of the available funding. There is always more demand than there is available funding, which is a constant. However, that is only to assist in the development of those works and the councils themselves will have to deal with some of the works. Works are sometimes actually coastal protection works or relate to coastal erosion issues, which do not fall within the remit of our Department.