Ms Caroline Bocquel:

I have met the EPA with a senior team to ensure it understood the importance of ensuring shellfish waters were priority investments and that they were classified as priority areas. Unless they are qualified as priority areas, it is very difficult to get Uisce Éireann to invest in them because it is working through the priority areas as set by the EPA. We have had good engagement with it and with the Marine Institute. We believe we are on the right course in terms of its understanding of the importance, collectively, of ensuring the water quality in those areas is dealt with. It has taken some time to get that moving in the right direction but over the last six weeks or so we are making significant progress. We will be keeping a very close eye on that because without good quality water, the whole sector will be declassified, which would be completely unacceptable, so that is an area we are very focused on.

The impact of infrastructure and dredging in smaller harbours on the sector is not an area we have looked at, but we will. I absolutely understand the importance of that, so it is something I will take back and have a discussion internally on. On Dunmore East and Dingle, I speak with Deirdre Lane quite a lot on a number of issues. We have very good relationships with all the ports around the country. I take the Cathaoirleach's point that there is a good opportunity there. As we are working forward in our strategy with the inshore sector, there is an opportunity to look at some of those inshore species and the tourism aspects that are also set out in the programme for Government in the context of opportunities for marine tourism. Looking at it in that context, there is opportunity there, so that is a very good point I will also take back.

On the ice plants, Howth is operational at the moment. Over the past decade or so, we have had a reduction in the need for ice plants because the vast majority of vessels have been grant-aided to have onboard icemaking equipment. The vast majority of vessels not capable of taking onboard equipment were decommissioned under the voluntary decommissioning scheme in 2023, so just a handful of boats are reliant on the ice plants. However, they are very important infrastructure because they are needed as a contingency for boats when their ice equipment breaks down. In Howth, we had an ice plant that was extremely energy-intensive. It was built at time when there were hundreds of boats using it and no onboard ice equipment. We have moved to mobile units that can generate ice much more energy- and cost-efficiently. We have a contingency plan in place in case we do not have adequate ice whereby we can bring in ice from one of the other ice plants, and we are working with the local representative body and our facilities engineer to see how we can automate that delivery of ice to make it a little easier for people who are using it. Dunmore East is one of our very high-producing areas for ice. It is certainly extremely viable and productive, as are some of the plants on the south coast.

On the question about FLAG funding, the priorities for FLAG funding are set by the FLAG boards, which are set up under community local-led development legislation that is set by Europe.

What we do in BIM is facilitate them to develop their own strategies, and then they implement them. We really just act as administrator. They will determine what the priorities are in their areas.

Let me refer to the opportunities that will come regarding nature restoration and some of the funds that are starting to become available. If we have inshore fishermen doing fisherman science it will naturally lead to restorative fisheries that would restore nature in some of the areas, and perhaps hatcheries. The tourism that might go with this could well be examined.