Dr. Rick Officer:

Our support for the location of offshore wind farms has been to offer up our advice. This is a request from what is now the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment for advice on the location of fishing activities. We have extensive records of where people fish and what time they fish. The approach is to try to avoid negative interactions, minimise those interactions and mitigate them if there is overlap. This has helped with the south coast designated maritime area plan that went through extensive public consultation and was then enacted without judicial review, which is quite an extraordinary outcome. This was because we were able to avoid as much as possible negative interaction overlaying the DMAP.

There was also a question on cumulative impacts. One of the issues we have is that in Ireland we have only one offshore wind farm. It has been there for a long time in the Irish Sea. We have to borrow evidence from other jurisdictions on the cumulative impacts. This is where our collaboration with the likes of ICES is to our benefit. We are contributing to the working groups established in these international fora, which study more broadly the habitat impacts and species impacts of offshore renewable energy development. We will have to borrow this knowledge when we provide advice on planning decisions here.

With regard to fixed-term contracts, we have a process that has commenced and is ongoing with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, whereby we have been converting staff on long-term contracts, in fishery sampling in particular, to contracts of indefinite duration. Of course, the big concern of the Department is the nature of the funding for this, which needs to be secure and long term. Where we have been able to establish this, we have made these transitions.

With regard to other areas of work we are doing for other Departments, I am very keen that if this work is enduring then it needs to be treated as enduring in the contractual arrangements for our staff. This is an ongoing conversation I am having with the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to try to achieve this transition.