Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 15 July 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs
Planning Challenges in Offshore Renewable Energy: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Robert McCabe:
The total of 17 organisations is made of regional and national organisations. Obviously, if we took in every organisation in the country - there are quite a lot of local organisations in the seafood sector - we would be overwhelmed with numbers. As I said, there are 17 regional and national organisations, ranging from the producer and processor organisations, through to organisations supported by BIM, such as the national inshore fishery forums and the regional inshore fishery forums. There are also the national inshore fisheries associations. They are all still there and still engaged. They cover the country geographically and the sectors involved. The IFA represents aquaculture, and it is a member too. All the organisations still attend. Certainly, as I mentioned in the brief, we are reviewing the terms of reference now. One of the concerns is that perhaps we have too many people in the room. To try to get work done, we might need to see if there is a better way to do things. We are always trying to get better outcomes and better ways of doing things. It is not, though, a working group where there is going to be a vote, so there is never any concern that there are too many from this sector and fewer from another one, or whatever. It is a working group that is very much consensus driven.
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