Ms Caroline Bocquel:

I thank Deputy Maxwell. There is no doubt it is very frustrating and I agree with all of the points Ms McManus, Mr. O'Sullivan and Ms Morrissey have made. Certainly, they are points we are deeply aware of. We speak to IFA Aquaculture and the Department to see how we can assist in any way possible to try to move this along. BIM's mandate is not as the licensing authority. We work very much on the edges of the licensing process, in that we map sites for people and help with their applications but we do not have any role in determining those licences. There is no doubt there is great opportunity in the sector if that matter can be resolved.

Notwithstanding this, there are things we can and do do to develop the sector. It is not only reliant on licences. As Mr. O'Sullivan said, access to grant aid is important and operators are not able to avail of it. We do a number of things. We focus very much on trying to optimise the sector that is there. We have 1,800 people working in the sector turning over €210 million, so there is a lot to work with. We focus, for example, on survivability. To take salmon for example, a 1% increase in survivability of salmon would generate an extra €6 million for the economy at the first point of sale. Any improvement we can make on survivability will have a direct impact on the viability and profitability of those businesses. We have projects such as our bubble curtain, for example, where we are trying to help improve the survivability of salmon.

We are very exposed as a country. To come back to Deputy Mac Lochlainn's comment earlier on why we are not more like the Faroe Islands, we have a very different geographic situation to the Faroe Islands. They have very deep sheltered fjords while we do not. We have much more shallow coastlines that are very exposed to the Atlantic. What this means is that, in addition to the fact we are going to be limited in the capacity we can develop, we are also very exposed to storms, plankton blooms and jellyfish coming in. Therefore, survivability is key. We have had some catastrophic losses in recent years, with entire sites being wiped out in one storm.

Anything we can do as an agency to improve that will have a direct economic benefit, so that is a key area of focus for us that has a specific return.

The next area, which Ms McMahon also mentioned, is the cost of production. It is extremely high in Ireland, partially because of our organic status. About 50% of the cost of running a farm is feed. I mentioned aquatech in my opening statement and anything we can do, working with some of these technology companies, to improve the cost-effectiveness of feed and lower those costs will again have a direct economic benefit to those farms. Additionally, we have been trialling hybrid wind systems on the barges that are servicing the site. Rather than running them off diesel, which is another significant cost, we have been looking at running them with wind turbines. We are looking at lots of different things we can do. We have trialled reverse osmosis to produce fresh water. We are looking at all the components of running those businesses to see how we can make them more economically viable, how to strengthen that return and how to improve the survivability of salmon. While I agree the licensing is without a shadow of a doubt a big challenge, there are lots of areas BIM continues to work on to develop the sector.