Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

I thank everyone for their presentations. Thankfully now we have a focus on fisheries and seafood every week but in a previous committee we only really had a focus on fisheries three or four times a year as part of the agriculture committee. Even within that we had a dedicated session or two, which were eye-opening in terms of aquaculture. I am pretty sure the statistics are still the same and it was that the Faroe Islands, which has a population not much larger than that of the Inishowen Peninsula, has a bigger aquaculture industry than Ireland. Iceland, with a population of around the same as Belfast city has a much bigger aquaculture industry than Ireland, as of course do Scotland and Norway. We are completely underperforming in terms of the potential of aquaculture. In fairness to anybody I have spoken to in the industry, they do not ever contest the right of somebody to object. If someone proposes to put in place an aquaculture operation of course people have the right to object but the issue is that a quick decision needs to be made. Whatever that decision is, make a decision and make it on a timely basis.

I want to focus on the impact of the ongoing delays in licensing. I have put questions to the Marine Institute and the Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board, ALAB, both of which have appeared before this committee, when new chairpersons were being appointed. In fairness to the new chairpersons, they were only getting read into their brief. I have asked them and I have asked the Minister if they have enough resources to make these assessments and make these decisions in a timely fashion. My request to the aquaculture sector is to talk more about the impact of the delay in licensing and the impact on the sector's ability to open new markets. I recall speaking to some representatives of the industry a few years ago and the Government was taking them out to Asia to try to build new markets. They asked how could they build new markets when they could not guarantee a pipeline because they did not know whether they were going to have a licence in the foreseeable future. For the committee members' benefit, please address the underperformance of the industry and the impact of the delays in making decisions on licensing.