Mr. Michael Mulloy:

I thank the Deputy. The licensing system basically fell foul of the ECJ in the 1990s in that the directives we referred to in our submission were not being properly implemented by the State

Special areas of conservation, SACs, especially marine areas, were designated and the objectives of those were never fully investigated. The assessments were never carried out. The European Court of Justice ruled that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine could no longer issue aquaculture licences in those areas, even where there were existing farms. That meant that people who were in business, like me - I have been a mussel farmer for 40 years, as the Deputy knows; I am from his constituency - had aquaculture licences dating from the 1980s and we could not renew them in the 1990s. We were operating without a proper licence for about 15 years. We were treated under section 19(a), which was a provision in the Act that an operator could continue to operate pending a renewal. However, in that intervening time, despite the fact that European money was available to support and stimulate aquaculture, we could not avail of that money. It was not available to an operation that was not fully licensed, and the majority of the shellfish industry was not fully licensed at that time. That hindered our development in a big way, as the Deputy can imagine. Ms Morrissey is in discussion with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and she will update the committee on the status of that.