Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs
Aquaculture Innovation and Development: Discussion
2:00 am
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Táimíd i seisiún poiblí anois. We are now in public session. Before we begin, I must read out a note on privilege. Those who have been at meetings of this committee previously will have heard this already but I must read it into the record. Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. This means that, as witnesses, they have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at the committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed by me to cease giving evidence on an issue.
Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard. They are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts - and I do not believe this situation arises today - will be asked to note they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by the witnesses outside of the proceedings held by the committee of any matters arising from proceedings.
Our members have heard this many times already, but I wish to advise them of the constitutional requirements that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, a member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. I ask any member partaking via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making their contribution, confirm verbally that they are on the grounds of Leinster House. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will direct members to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
The agenda for today's meeting is aquaculture, innovation and development. The committee will hear from two sets of witnesses. Representing Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM, we have Ms Caroline Bocquel, chief executive officer; Mr. Richard Donnelly, interim CEO and director of development and innovation services; Mr. Rory Campbell, director of seafood technical services; and Dr. Emmet Jackson, director of economic and strategic services. From the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, aquaculture committee, we have Mr. Finian O'Sullivan, chairperson; Ms Catherine McManus, vice chairperson; and Ms Teresa Morrissey, aquaculture policy executive.
Both sets of witnesses have provided opening statements, which have been circulated. I will give each group five minutes to either read their opening statements or give a five-minute summary. I ask the witnesses to note that under the screens around the room are countdown timers and to keep an eye on those in order that we can get through the business of the meeting. Following the opening statements, we will go to a question-and-answer format. Members will have ten minutes each. That time is for both questions and responses. There can be back and forth. I will leave it to members to direct their questions to individual witnesses or sets of witnesses, and to come back in to ask follow-up questions within the ten minutes. If time allows, we will go to a second round.
I invite the witnesses from Bord Iascaigh Mhara to make their opening statement.
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
Cathaoirleach and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to speak today about innovation and development within Ireland’s aquaculture sector. Aquaculture is a vital part of Ireland’s blue economy. It sustains coastal and rural communities, supports local enterprise and contributes to our national reputation for producing safe, sustainable and high-quality seafood.
In 2024, the industry produced almost 38,500 tonnes of farmed seafood worth €210 million, an increase of 8% on the previous year. It supported 1,835 direct jobs and contributed €73 million in gross value added to the Irish economy. These figures reflect both the strength of and the strain within the sector. Irish aquaculture operates in some of Europe’s cleanest waters and is underpinned by world-class environmental standards. However, it faces real challenges, including reliance on a few key export markets, rising input costs, raw material shortages, a complex licensing system, labour constraints and the pressures of climate and biodiversity change.
BIM’s mission is to help the Irish seafood sector grow in value sustainably and across the whole supply chain. Our aquaculture work programme aligns fully with the National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Aquaculture Development 2030, in respect of which BIM is the lead agency on 32 of the 56 actions. Our approach centres on four interconnected themes, namely market-led growth, talent and capability, resilient and sustainable supply and innovation with cost-competitiveness. Together, these themes provide a joined-up framework to build a stronger, smarter and more sustainable aquaculture sector in Ireland. Our detailed work programme may be found on BIM’s website.
Ireland’s aquaculture has earned a global reputation for quality and sustainability, but it must capture greater value and diversify its markets.
Over 70% of our production is exported, mainly to France, the Netherlands and the UK, leaving producers exposed to market volatility. To address this, BIM, working with Bord Bia, is investing in branding, certification and storytelling that build consumer trust and highlight the provenance of Irish seafood. Programmes such as seafood certification, Taste the Atlantic and the seafood assurance pathway help producers access premium markets by meeting international standards and connecting aquaculture with tourism, gastronomy, and the wider Irish food brand. Our goal is to shift the conversation from commodity production to premium value creation, anchored in sustainability, traceability and local identity.
A resilient sector depends on its people. Many Irish farms are family run, with an ageing workforce and limited formal training routes. Attracting new entrants and building modern management skills are essential. Through BIM’s human capacity development plan and the proposed national aquaculture apprenticeship, we are building clear career pathways into the industry. The aquaculture remote classroom, ARC, brings aquaculture into schools and communities, reaching over 6,000 students annually and sparking interest among the next generation. Upskilling initiatives for producers in areas like digital tools, business management and sustainability will strengthen the sector’s long-term capability and succession planning. The Irish Oyster Packers Group, initiated and co-ordinated by BIM, has harnessed synergies between oyster growers and has given rise to the formation of the Next Generation Oyster Farmers Group, which has been pivotal in adopting new technologies and market access for Irish-branded oysters.
Sustainability and resilience are the foundations of Ireland’s aquaculture future. The sector faces growing biological and environmental pressures, including disease risk, seed shortages and the impacts of climate change. Our shellfish survey programme provides critical data on mussel and oyster stocks, seed settlement and husbandry practices to support more predictable and sustainable production. Our finfish challenge programme trials innovative technologies, including AI-driven fish welfare monitoring, hybrid energy systems and functional feeds that reduce antibiotic use. Complementary programmes on biodiversity, invasive species and freshwater quality are helping farmers adapt to a changing environment and reduce their carbon footprint. Through these initiatives, we are supporting Ireland’s leadership in sustainable seafood production and ensuring that the sector’s growth is environmentally responsible and scientifically grounded.
Ireland will never compete on volume with global producers, but we can lead on innovation, efficiency and quality. High input costs and small farm scale demand smarter, technology-driven solutions. The aquaculture accelerator programme, supported by the Blue Revolution Fund and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, is creating a €15 million investment platform for start-ups and SMEs developing aquatech solutions from precision feeding and automation to renewable energy and environmental monitoring. Our co-ordinated local management scheme, CLAMS, and special unified marking scheme, SUMS, initiatives continue to improve local co-ordination, safety and environmental management within aquaculture areas, strengthening the link between innovation and community. These programmes together position Ireland as an emerging European hub for aquaculture innovation through attracting investment, fostering collaboration and de-risking technology adoption for small producers.
The future of Irish aquaculture depends on collaboration between producers, researchers, policymakers and communities. BIM’s work programme is not about working in isolation; it is about partnership, combining local knowledge with national strategy and global best practice. By investing in people, data and innovation, Ireland can build an aquaculture sector that is competitive, climate resilient and community rooted, one that delivers real economic opportunity while protecting the marine environment that sustains it.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
Go raibh maith agat agus gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste as an gcuireadh a bheith anseo inniu. The Chair has introduced my colleagues. Today is an opportunity for us to broadly set forth our state of the union, so to speak, in respect of aquaculture in Ireland.
In our opening statement, we cite a number of policy and guidance documents, including the strategic guidelines for sustainable EU aquaculture and the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund, EMFAF, 2021-2027, the aims of which are to guide and fund a sustainable development of the sector while incorporating the European Green Deal. We refer to the aquaculture licence review 2017 and the National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Aquaculture Development 2030, which is the primary policy document for the Irish aquaculture sector because it sets out the Government's policy objectives and key actions to 2030. Our objectives in IFA aquaculture, working within this framework, are to increase output production volume, value and the number of jobs in the sector, hence creating jobs and enterprise in our coastal regions.
We describe in our opening statement the importance that aquaculture has to some of our rural communities in creating jobs and enterprise, identity - in some instances - and, of course, the production of a valuable food commodity.
We have quoted this financial worth to the Irish economy as being €211 million for a production tonnage of 38,500 of seafood. These figures are taken from the BIM report, entitled "The Business of Seafood 2024: A Snapshot of Ireland's Seafood Sector". We have also suggested that, in a matter of years, Irish aquaculture could contribute €500 million in direct farm gate income and a further €500 million in ancillary activity, for example, marine engineering, seafood processing and marine tourism, if expansion of the industry were allowed to happen. We believe coastal rural communities would benefit from this increase in scale of the industry. In saying that, we are acutely that the seas around us are a shared resource.
Government policy proposed in 2016 that aquaculture production be increased from 45,000 tonnes to 81,500 tonnes per annum by 2024. I have quoted a figure of 38,500 tonnes as being the production output for 2024, so if one looks at the figures, it is clear to see that our production levels are stagnant or in decline. I accept that the target figures are notional but we are an island nation and we in IFA Aquaculture believe that these levels or targets achievable. To reconcile the gap in production outputs, we need to create a situation where confidence to invest in aquaculture is restored. We need improvements in infrastructural facilities on our piers, better amenities in our coastal communities to keep youth there and an improved social licence. In that, I include political and public acceptance of the industry because I do not hear a lot of that from day to day. I do not hear that kind of public support.
Most of all, we need major legislative change to cut the waiting time for aquaculture licences. To this end, we all need to be more pragmatic and innovative. Waiting three to five years for an aquaculture licence in the case of shellfish or, as is the case with fish, 15 to 20 years will not make it happen. Investment will simply go elsewhere and our youth will go elsewhere. They already are. IFA Aquaculture still has the plans, aspirations and energy to make it happen but time is running out. We need to start taking things seriously if we are to build and maintain a critical mass in this industry to justify all the State inputs from all stakeholders involved, including BIM, the Marine Institute, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, the Department, processors and producers, who are still toiling away living in hope of a better day. I probably left out some stakeholders, but that is just a flavour of what is involved in the industry.
I referenced the latest OECD report, which came out in February 2025 and states that aquaculture is a driver of seafood production across the world and that wild catch is projected to remain stable or decline slightly. That is the prediction of the OECD of a future world that needs more protein with a growing population while production in Ireland and the rest of Europe is stagnating. The administrative burden and the regulatory framework imposed by Europe for starters and, consequently, Ireland have to be more pragmatic and reasonable. To this end, we note that the European Commission plans to reduce the administrative burden for businesses by at least 25% by the end of its mandate. It started that process this year; I saw stuff about it in July. For us, that is encouraging. It is probably encouraging for many industries. We encourage the Irish Government to embrace this line of thinking. We are encouraged by comments from the Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans, Mr. Costas Kadis, on his visit to Ireland earlier this year when he said that aquaculture had the potential to increase EU seafood production and contribute to food security as the fastest growing food production sector globally.
It is now critical that a single piece of legislation be brought forward to implement and underpin appropriate aquaculture policy in this country and bring together all the existing primary, secondary and amended legislation into one single provision.
This has been done in other member states and we now feel that the time is overdue to embark on this road in Ireland because we are getting over in it. We urge the Department to act on this to be ready to attract and encourage interested investors in the agriculture industry going forward. This will help to unlock the future potential of the industry for all the reasons I have already cited. Some of our immediate needs are because we are working within a framework now that we have to work within. We feel that there could be more pragmatism brought into the system as well. At the moment we feel that human resources is an issue around appropriate assessments and that it is a desktop exercise for the most part, so that people are needed to be able to do it. There are three people there now and prior to that, there was just one and I believe there are two being appointed but that kind of stuff should have been done previously.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I will open it up to questions and answers. Thank you very much for that. We can get the remainder in questions and answers. Deputy Mac Lochlainn is next.
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.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
One of the impacts of the delays in licensing is obviously on production. We cannot produce the volume but a big impact of the licensing delays is that any person whose licence is in renewal cannot benefit from the sustainable aquaculture grant scheme. On the one hand we are creating a fund to promote and grant aid projects in aquaculture but if a licence is in renewal, which is the case for many people for years, they are disqualified for grant aid from Europe. This is all because the licensing system is not working properly. It is a contradiction, in that money is available to help people develop business enterprise and on the other hand, because people do not have a licence through not fault of their own, they cannot avail of the funding. It is not of our doing. We have been waiting for years for licences.
However, confidence in the industry is undermined because you are trying to sell the idea of an industry to young people who basically take one look at it and ask why they would get into it given all its problems. My son saw that we survived down the years and he got into it but to attract new people into the industry is just impossible because there are too many problems. The two main issues that I see are that production is not there and there is no critical mass to supply and maintain continuity to markets, as Ms McManus would say, and, second, there is a sustainable aquaculture fund but one cannot benefit from it.
Ms Catherine McManus:
On the finfish sector of aquaculture, the industry has not grown in 30 years. In fact, it has probably gone backwards in terms of production. People ask why and one reason is that our costs in Ireland are so much higher, so the finfish sector decided to go under organic production rules. Automatically, that reduces the volume that can be produced in the licensed area. The licensed areas have not changed in 20 or 30 years. In our case, for example, we have halved our production to comply with organic farming rules. Ireland has gone down that route because we feel the organic profile suits the Irish image. It is a way of trying to get a higher margin on our product because we are competing against big producers elsewhere, in Norway, Scotland and even in the Faroes, where production costs are lower because of their economies of scale. The Irish industry has pivoted that way but that cannot go on forever. As we know, in the past five years, business costs - energy costs and input costs - have increased significantly for everybody due to various geopolitical events and so on. We need to be able to reach other markets that want this high-end, organic food product. Unless we can guarantee continuity of supply, we cannot do that, given our current production limitations at the moment. That is where we are stuck. In a way, time is running out for us because other producers elsewhere will probably take on the organic production model. That is where Ireland will lose out. This stagnation means we are losing.
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
The presentation refers to a 20-year licence. People in the industry have explained to me that when they talk about a 20-year licence they also know there need to be improved regulatory and monitoring systems in place. If one is trying to build a market and one needs to show a pipeline, what would that look like in terms of increased regulation and monitoring? Speaking personally, I think we can build a much bigger aquaculture industry in Ireland while addressing the legitimate environmental concerns people have. I think we can do both. If we have a system in which decisions are made quicker, which is better resourced to make those decisions and is resourced for regulation and monitoring, I think we can achieve a balance. Will the witnesses talk about their vision of how we can get that balance in the industry? How can we address legitimate environmental concerns while growing the industry?
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
Licences are issued for a term of ten years. We have many licences, as Ms McManus and Mr. O’Sullivan noted, waiting 15 or 20 years to be renewed. They are covered under legislation, in that they can operate, which is fine, but there are concerns about things like the licence conditions being out of date, to a certain extent, as Ms McManus referred to, and in terms of the ability to produce at a level that is economic and using modern and innovative practices. Obviously, we have moved on in the last 30 years. That is one aspect. If someone is waiting 20 years for a ten-year licence to be renewed and the licence is out of date, that does not work. One of the things that can be acted on is to issue a 20-year licence term.
That is actually provided for in our current legislation. To do that, however, we also need legislative changes to facilitate the monitoring and compliance that would need to go with a 20-year licence term. Therefore, it is not a case of issuing a 20-year licence term and people come back in 19 years when they need their renewal. That is not what we are saying. We are saying we need a proper monitoring compliance system alongside that 20-year licence term, which is really tied up in the renewal of the licence as well because in order to renew the licence, in the case of shellfish, people need an appropriate assessment carried out on a bay basis. That is carried out by the State. It is carried out by the Marine Institute. There are huge delays there in carrying out that work. It is very important work that needs to be done. In the case of a finfish licence, people need an environmental impact assessment along with many other types of assessment, such as an appropriate assessment and Natura impact statement. All that work needs to be done, and it is incredibly important that it is done and that is time-bound as well in that those investments have to be updated and renewed. However, we can build a licensing system that incorporates that so that maybe those assessments are done at a particular point several times, obviously, throughout that 20-year period.
We also have lots of different monitoring and regulatory systems that are already in place around fish health, benthic ecology and food safety, which are already built into the system. However, maybe those pieces are not connected up as well as they could be in a system that would be robust in terms of monitoring and compliance that would satisfy, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, people who have concerns, which are valid, and address those concerns. We have a system that is probably a bit piecemeal at the moment. There are some parts of it working very well and that function very well, but a lot of it does not speak to other parts of the system, if that makes sense. A 20-year licence term is possible, therefore, but there is a bit of work that has to go in underneath to be able to sustain that.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
I thank everybody for coming in. I am just going to ask the witnesses a few straight questions. If I were to apply for a licence today, how long would it take?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
If the Deputy were applying for finfish licence, as I said, we have quoted waiting times of up to 10 or 15 years, so it looks that bad. In our own bay at home, we are in licence renewal since January 2023. We started the process back in the middle of 2022 when we did all the mapping and so forth. We are heading into 2026 now, so the Deputy can figure out how long it is going to take. It is just frustrating. I often say at this stage to the Department that our mussels will grow fine without any licence. There was no regulation really when we started way back in the 1980s. The amended Act came afterwards and the whole business had to be regulated, and it got regulated and everyone was compliant with that. However, what happens then in the vacuum of licences being issued is that we have people drifting towards non-compliance. We could find very quickly that the industry - there are roles in this industry, and we do not know either; I am only speculating - becomes unregulated to a degree, and that is not a good place to be for the industry or for the State. The timeline for waiting is like asking "How long is a piece of string?" in the present structure.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
Even if people wanted to extend their farm now, would they still have to apply for a separate licence?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
They would. They would be starting from scratch. We have to do the appropriate assessments in our case because we farm shellfish and such. People have to run through the whole system of public consultation and advertising and the appeals process through the ALAB, and then you could end up in a judicial review, so, as I said, how long is a piece of string? It just seems to me that the whole thing has become too cumbersome really, and behind that there are people who are passionate about the industry. When we started out, we were full of passion about the industry and we might not have considered the whole regulation of it too much until we were made to do so. However, I think the passion and the energy is drifting out of the industry. People just see it as too frustrating, wherein we have all the other problems around the industry. We are an island nation. We have to get our product off the island to market it and we see problems there after Brexit and all that, so there is kind of a sequence of problems in the whole thing, and the licence is an issue because we do not have the security of being there for long.
That is one of the reasons we are talking about the 20-year licence. If you get a young fella coming out of college and you are trying to coax him into the industry and he sees in ten years he could be out of business again, he is going to build his career somewhere else.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
We do not have certainty as to how long it takes to get a licence, which is part of the problem. Therefore, we do not have the certainty to be able to invest in the sector and to encourage the next generation because we do not know how long it could take. It could take anything from two to three years to ten,15 or 20 years to get a licence.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
How does it work in other countries? Does it take as long? Are they more proactive? Do the witnesses know?
Ms Catherine McManus:
I know from colleagues in our sector in Norway and Scotland that it is unheard of to wait 15 or 20 years for a fishing licence or even an amendment to a licence. Our neighbours experience a maximum period, from the start of an application to a decision, of probably three years. In Norway, it is much less.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
On environmental concerns, how do other countries do environmental work on the farms? Is it as tedious as our system or is it more proactive to get people up and working?
Ms Catherine McManus:
In other countries, there are requirements for environmental monitoring and reporting in the sector, as is the case in Ireland. We probably have the longest data sets for the marine environment of any sector. In our case, we have data sets, for example for certain places in Donegal, going back to the early 1980s. Nobody else has that information or data. We have everything on water quality and benthic impacts. That information is available and furnished to our regulatory authority. More could be made of that information. It could be joined up with other agencies but we hold the longest continuous data set. We know what the environment was like 30 or 40 years ago. We know what it is like today and we know what the impacts are or are not.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
Moving forward, shellfish is a vital part of the economy. IFA aquaculture is looking for a 20-year licence. If it got that licence, would there be a massive improvement in things going forward or will it just tick along the way it is going?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
As I said, we still have other issues to deal with in the industry but at least if you have a 20-year licence, you have continuity. You are not fearful that you could have to go through the whole process again and maybe you would be out of business. That is important for the young people today. They need to see they will be there for a substantial period. There are other issues. I am not saying there are not other issues in the industry. We have always had issues in the industry since we started. Since I started 40 years ago, there have been a lot of changes. We were part of that process. There will always be difficulties but to inject energy into the industry, stability and long-term licences are needed.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
How come it is taking so long? It seems a silly question but everything seems to be going from ten to 15 to 20 years.
Ms Catherine McManus:
That is what we want to find out and what we want a resolution to. We do not see why it should be so difficult or lengthy. There needs to be a concerted effort, as has been pointed out by my colleagues, to look at all the legislation that underpins our sector, consolidate it and put timelines on decisions. The applicant has timelines. For example, if we make an application, there are very defined timelines of when you have to apply, advertise, respond and so on, but we do not have the timelines the other way around. If you make an application to a local authority to build a house, there is certainty. We know how long the process takes and what it is.
In this particular forum, however, we have no certainty whatsoever.
On the point about why we want 20-year licences, our investors are very patient people, waiting for some progress in Ireland on aquaculture output but investors need certainty because, in our sector, you need deep pockets to invest in anything to do with the sea. We are dealing with a very difficult environment. We are responding to climate change. It is a difficult environment to work in. You need deep pockets to fund that but, equally, our investors need certainty that licences will have some durability and length so that their investment will be secured.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
I will come in there as well. We are trying to get a meeting with all stakeholders, between the Department, the Marine Institute and the whole lot, who have an input into the whole licensing thing. It is not trying to find someone to blame. It is basically trying to find solutions. We are grateful that we have a Minister of State now dedicated to the marine and we have a dialogue going with him and his Department. We are trying to get to a place where the whole system can be improved. It may be an idea that the committee gets in the same stakeholders and goes through it with them at this committee as well. There might be learning in it for everyone. We are not in a place where we want to lay blame on anyone. We want to find solutions to the situation.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
I reiterate that, and there is probably a role for this committee in trying to answer that question. We would love to be able to answer that question so there is probably a role for this committee in trying to, as Mr. O'Sullivan said, talk to all the stakeholders involved in the licensing system and see if members can get an answer.
David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
I think it was last year that Ms Morrissey made comments that the aquaculture licence applications sent into the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine were being dealt with in a reasonable timeframe but she then spoke of historic delays and awaiting a European Court of Justice ruling under the birds and habitats directive. Ms Morrissey said:
We are now almost at the end of the process in dealing with the aquaculture licensing backlog [with 30 remaining finfish licensing applications in line to be determined by the end of 2024]. The 'Review of the Aquaculture Licencing Process' was carried out in 2017 with 30 recommendations for a more streamlined, efficient aquaculture licensing system - DAFM are currently working on implementing these...
Has the backlog been gone from the end of last year? What about the 30 recommendations for the streamlined aquaculture licence system? Where is that at? If the witnesses could please answer those, I will come back with something else.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
The backlog is not cleared. It is an historical issue. With regard to shellfish, the backlog the Deputy referred to after the licensing review in 2017 was cleared, probably towards the end of 2019. That backlog was cleared with regard to shellfish. There were 600-odd applications regarding shellfish. However, many of those are now due for renewal again because the backlog ate into the ten years of their licence term and once they were renewed, some of the ten years were up again. Some of them are heading into their licence renewal again for that ten-year process so there is a backlog accumulating again in respect of shellfish.
On finfish licences, they were never cleared. That backlog in finfish licences still remains. We are still going through that process. Ms McManus has referred to it a couple of times. Things have progressed slightly in that it has gone through the environmental impact assessment piece. That has been completed by the industry and submitted to the Department and is being assessed by the Marine Institute, which is a huge body of work. It is progressing through public and statutory consultation, so that is some progress but we are a long way from a licence being issued with regard to clearing that backlog.
On the 30 recommendations, does the Deputy want to know where they are at, roughly, in terms of implementation?
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
We sat down with the Department about two years ago and looked at where those 30 recommendations were.
Their implementation, and the timeline for the implementation of the 30 recommendations, was always unclear. We are eight years on from the publication of the report in 2017. To this day, there is nothing we would disagree with in the licensing recommendations of 2017. Everything we need to do is in there, including legislative reform and looking at having a single aquaculture Act that deals with all of the legislative amendments and primary and secondary legislation, as Mr. O'Sullivan referred to. They are all in there. Some of them have been progressed and some of them have been completed. I suppose it depends on how you view completion and progression. We would disagree that some have been completed or progressing. Some have not been touched at all, for example, dealing with a review of the legislation from top to bottom and looking at implementing an aquaculture Act. I could not give a number on how many have been completed and how many have not.
David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
I welcome the representatives from BIM. From the opening statement, we would think all was rosy in the garden and that there were only a few problems. That is different to what we are hearing at the meeting. If someone went to the bank and said they were thinking of starting an aquaculture business and needed the money but that it could take up to 20 years to get licence, there is not a financial institution in the world that would tell someone to work away, give them the money and put it on hold for 20 years. What is BIM's view on the shambles of trying to get a licence? How will we build an aquaculture business? What young person would want to invest? If Mr. O'Sullivan has children, what young person in his part of the country would say they would take it on with all the hassle? If they were 25 years of age, they would be nearly at retirement age before they would get the next licence. This is what it comes down to. I have only picked Mr. O'Sullivan as an example because he is here. What is the view of BIM on this?
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.
David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
I thank Ms Bocquel for her reply. What I am getting there is BIM want to work with the producers, so where is the logjam? Who is it with? It is with the licensing authority. Chair, we need to ask the licensing authority to come in. I would like this group to come back in after a year to see what has moved, whether the backlog has changed and what can we do. If there is such a backlog in licensing, that has to change. When you hear it takes 20 years to get a licence, there is no other business that could sustain that. Is the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine the licensing authority? It is. Maybe the Department is on the work programme but we have to see some of its officials. BIM wants to work with Mr. O'Sullivan and his group, which is good to hear. No matter what, it can be said we could do more and we do not do enough, but if the Department is the hold-up here, we need to get its officials in and put the questions to them.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I thank the Deputy. That is something that has been raised here before with the Minister and something we will definitely be coming back to because, as the Deputy has rightly pointed out, it is absolutely astounding that there are such delays.
David Maxwell (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
We need Mr. O'Sullivan and his group here with the Department to get the counterarguments.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
We will discuss the arrangements around that but it is something we need to look at for sure.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
I thank the witnesses for coming here. I have a number of question so I will go right in. My first is for the IFA. Do the representatives think recommendations from the aquaculture licensing review in 2017 have been implemented yet and what is stopping this in their opinion?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
We did a review of the recommendations of the licensing review. Ms Morrissey and I had a review with the Department. A lot of them, you could say, were implemented, but I would probably bring the whole thing back to the legislation as it stands being a bit cumbersome. There are hoops to jump through and jumps to jump over. There are too many of them, really, and that is part of the problem.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
Yes. When we say that, we are conscious, as I said earlier, that the seas around our coast are a shared resource. It is a competitive place to be in lots of areas. We are environmentalists. I consider myself to be concerned about the environment. We do not do anything that would upset it. There is awareness out there that we have to protect the environment because it is where we work and make our living as well. That is important for us. The whole system needs to be reviewed. We have said it should probably be condensed into one-off legislation. We have enough learned down the years to know how to design that to protect all the stakeholders involved like, as I said, people who are concerned about the environment and us who have production and create jobs.
When you go to the coastal regions, you will see that we are operating. I am in Bantry Bay. One of the Deputies was wondering where I am from. We work away out there. If a lot of the people uptown met me, they would ask, "Are ye still at the mussels?". They do not even see it, if Deputy Ward knows what I mean. It runs away in the background. If they saw a truck on the pier, they would be wondering what it is for. It is not something that is inciting any trouble or problems. People are not that aware of it. It is a good industry. Shellfish are very good for the environment, for cleaning water - I am trying to think of the phrase - and for carbon capture and all that kind of stuff.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
Just to be clear, on the question Deputy Ward asked in terms of the recommendations being implemented, a number of them have and a number of them are probably in progress. One of them that has not is the reform and review of the legislation. That has not happened and it is probably the most fundamental recommendation in there and it has not even been touched. Some amendments are being looked at. They are in the process of being drafted by the Department, but they are just amendments. One of the recommendations is to review and reform the legislation by means of a single Act.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
It was stated that targets to increase production and to develop the Irish aquaculture industry have not been met. Could Mr. O'Sullivan outline some of these targets for us and tell us why he believes they have not been met?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
The targets were laid out by people. We have our own targets in the industry. I have a target for what my company can produce but nationally the target was set at 81,500 tonnes by 2004. It was decided at that stage that we had the potential to produce to those type of targets, but we are far short of doing so. The actual target we were operating from at that time was 45,000 tonnes. Last year, it was 38,500 tonnes. There can be variations in shellfish, but every fellow knows what he can grow. You might say you are going to grow 1,000 tonnes, and you might grow 900 tonnes or 1,050 tonnes.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
There was a report from the European Court of Auditors in 2023 looking at aquaculture on a European basis. Despite increased funding through the MFF, the actual production of aquaculture at a European level, including Ireland, has stagnated. It did not increase. It did not really decrease – although it probably did in some countries - it is just bobbing along at a stagnated level in Europe. The report confirms that.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
My next question is for BIM. Why is 70% of our farmed seafood being exported? Do Irish consumers prefer well-caught products over farmed products? Why does Ms Bocquel think this is the case?
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
All of the salmon that is grown in Ireland is organic. A very small amount of it might fall out of organic status because of a treatment it has to have, but it is all grown as organic salmon. That is a premium product. There is only a certain appetite or market demand for organic salmon. Salmon is the number one seafood we consume by a considerable margin. More than 60,000 of the seafood we consume in Ireland is salmon. We have an enormous love for salmon but only a certain amount of that would be organic salmon and the rest would be conventional salmon that we do not grow in Ireland but that we import and is processed here by our processors and it is then sold on the Irish market.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
What Ms Bocquel is saying is that the largest market we have is for salmon but that we still import from abroad. We do not fulfil the demand with Irish salmon.
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
Yes. There are effectively two different products really. The organic salmon that we grow here achieves a much higher price. We still sell a lot of that onto the Irish market, for which there is a certain level of demand. The rest of the demand is met with lower priced conventional salmon, which we do not grow here. As Ms McManus stated, as a country we chose in the 1990s to move to a fully organic model. As a result, conventional salmon is imported from other countries.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
Can Ms Boucquel outline the environmental regulations in the monitoring of Irish aquaculture and the enforcement process used when these regulations are broken?
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
Could witnesses from either of the organisations speak to the negative perception of aquaculture among stakeholders that may influence broader public opinion on the environmental challenges they are facing?
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
There is a lot of work to be done regarding the social licence of salmon or what one might regard as the level of trust that exists. We have started a formal programme on that this year. We have a couple of initiatives that have been very successful. We have an aquaculture remote classroom that goes around the country and teaches children - mostly in coastal communities but not exclusively - about the impact of aquaculture, how positive it is for their communities, where the food comes from and the benefits for their local communities. It has been an overwhelming success. There are 500 schools on the waiting list for the vehicle. We have other programmes such as Taste the Atlantic where we work with 21 producers along the coast. This started off as a programme to build trust among the local community. It involved inviting members of the local community, visitors and tourists to see their farms, do a farm tour and go out on boats to understand how they were farming responsibly in a very sustainable way. They also had food offerings there. They are hugely successful for those businesses. In addition to building that trust, they are finding that it is also a very good revenue stream.
Having said all of that, there is a lot more that we need to do. Over the course of the past year, we have been developing a formal programme, which we will discuss with industry and all of the other stakeholders mentioned by Ms Morrissey earlier, to look at a systemic approach to how we can tackle this at a national level. It is not a question of BIM being able to do it on our own. We need to do it collaboratively. We have some very good initiatives that have been very positive but we believe that if we look at some of the models from other countries, and we have taken some of the learnings from international best practice, there are some very good models out there regarding how we can move this along at pace. That is a significant priority for us for 2026.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
We commend BIM on many of the initiatives it has taken in terms of aquaculture remote classroom and Taste the Atlantic. It has been very helpful in trying to explain to people what aquaculture is because much of the problem is that people do not actually know what it is, and what they do not know and do not understand, they do not like. In terms of building trust with communities, we do not generally have an issue in the communities in which aquaculture operates. Mr. O'Sullivan mentioned Bantry. Obviously, people up the town would not know but, generally speaking, there does not tend to be an awful lot of opposition where it operates. Ms McManus would say the same about some of those sites that are operating up and down the coast. There is a wider public perception, and a misunderstanding mostly, as to what aquaculture is and what it is about. There is a job of work we also have to do in the industry to address that.
Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
The importance of aquaculture to coastal communities where there is no alternative source of employment is very obvious. It is no small industry. It employs 1,835 people directly and up to 8,500 indirectly, with a turnover of some €210 million. It should be much greater than that. That is not the fault of the investors. I believe it is the fault of the system. Be it five years or ten, it takes far too long to secure a licence.
Mr. O'Sullivan mentioned, and I agree, that legislation needs to be put forward to implement and to underpin aquaculture by bringing together all of the existing legislation, be it primary, secondary or amended legislation. However big a job that is, it is not rocket science to be able to do that. We are trying to help people in the sector. We are here to learn of the pitfalls that can befall those who want to invest, because there is one advantage of aquaculture. The language of total allowable catches or quotas is not part of the language of people in the sector, and we must try to capitalise on this. Maybe I am wrong when I say this, but I think we learned a lot from Norway. In my own county, in the company Marine Harvest, the Norwegians were very involved and we have learned from them. We have the waters off our coast and the environment to attract investment. If we do anything as an outcome of this, let it be that we try to prevail upon the Minister. We are fortunate now that we have a designated Minister of State dealing with this because beforehand it was unclear whether it fell under agriculture, the marine or environment. We have to try to prevail upon him and the Government to do something to help. The delays are outlandish.
Do the witnesses favour a one-stop shop where licences could be submitted? Ms McManus made the point that planning applications normally take about seven or eight weeks and are either refused or accepted or further information is sought, which might delay it another six months. It was not the same but there is a good template at the moment. Previously, with An Bord Pleanála, applications could go on for years, whereas now the applications going to the new planning authority have to issue within a specified period. With new legislation, we have to insist that decisions should issue within a specified period, providing all the required information is supplied. If an application is made, it should not be accepted or validated until such time as all the information is there. That is not beyond the capabilities of those in the sector.
A lot of questions have been asked that I would have asked but I do not have to now. Reference was made to the improvement of infrastructure facilities. We raised this issue with the local authorities when we met last time and we have a tabular statement of works that are going on. I believe is a matter for the local authority or for the Department to provide the required infrastructure. I did not attend, but I am familiar with what happened in Limerick and in Cork. The Commissioner, Costas Kadis, was very supportive of this when he was there, but there is no point in him going to Limerick or to Cork and making supportive statements. It is like playing golf, there has to be a follow-through after they hit the first ball. Our job now is to ensure that we try to pursue this vigorously on behalf of the witnesses. They have enough to do to run their businesses, to invest and to try to make them sustainable. Those not making a profit will not survive.
We have been told that the national strategic plan for sustainable aquaculture development is progressing, with engagement with the strategic group. Is something happening there?
Perhaps Ms Bocquel or someone from BIM will address its human capacity development plan and the national aquaculture apprentices. Apprenticeships are very important. How is that progressing?
If the Minister grants a licence and it is appealed, am I right in saying that there is no statutory requirement on ALAB to furnish that? The old trick is to look for more information and that could go on and on, so I think if we are talking about having time limitations on applications there should also be a limitation on ALAB, providing all of the information has been submitted.
Those are my few questions, and there were other answers.
If I do not get in again, I will take the opportunity to wish the CEO of BIM, Ms Bocquel, who is moving on well. At least we have had an introduction to her here, and maybe we could work with her when she moves on to another role. I am not saying it is a promotion or demotion. To me, tourism is important. I wish her well when she moves on to her new post.
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
I thank the Deputy very much. To answer a couple of his questions, a stakeholder group has been established for the national strategic plan for sustainable aquaculture development, NSPSA, and I believe that will meet before the end of the year. Certainly, BIM has been invited to participate in that group. BIM does have responsibility for the majority of the actions under that plan, and we have been progressing at pace with many of those actions in any event. That group will meet before the end of the year, and I would expect there will be a report issuing in due course.
In relation to the human capacity development plan, we did commission a report on this. We have reviewed it. It is very good. We are now looking at a draft implementation plan of that. We have some additional recommendations. Once we have done that, we will publish the report with an implementation plan. Effectively, it is looking at a range of measures on how we can attract more people into the sector, so there is quite a detailed report to be published by the end of the year on that.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
I will just address a few of the Deputy's questions. I thank him very much; there were some very pertinent questions there. He mentioned a one-stop-shop. Would we be in preference of a one-stop-shop? We absolutely would. We have too many shops that we have to stop at at the moment to try to get a license and we still cannot get one. A one-stop-shop is actually referenced in a document called the strategic guidelines for sustainable EU agriculture. It is a recommendation in there. There is also a staff working document from the European Commission around addressing the regulatory and administrative burden. It is referenced in there. In a way, it is referenced in our own licensing review looking at that legislation. The Deputy mentioned a single legislative measure that we really do need to see some movement on. Therefore, we would prefer a one-stop-shop so that at least we would have some certainty around the process because, as I mentioned earlier, part of the problem is that we have no certainty around the process from when we make an application, where it is at in the various stages along that application process, how long each stage is taking and what the expectation could be in terms of a timeline to have the license at the end of that process. If we knew that it would take two years to get a license, that would be a fine thing, but we have no idea. Greece is a very good example of a country or member state that has implemented a one-stop-shop and a single aquaculture Act, and that is working pretty well for it. Denmark has another similar system with a one-stop-shop and a single aquaculture Act as well.
On the national strategic plan, the Deputy mentioned the stakeholder group. Yes, there is mention that it has been established. We are awaiting an invite to be part of that. We met the implementation group. However, the strategic plan is over two years old and we have only met the implementation group once, and that was this year. We could call that progress but, again, it is slow.
As the Deputy mentioned, ALAB is another process. People effectively start all over again in terms of how that process is dealt with. They may as well be starting from scratch in terms of how an appeal is dealt with in their applications. The process takes too long and we have no certainty around how long the process takes. It can take many years to get a decision from ALAB because it essentially has to redo a lot of the assessment work a second time around.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Very briefly, if Mr. O'Sullivan does not mind. We are under pressure.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
It is only a comment really. My son brought a young fella to me last week. He is going to Australia for 12 months, and he wanted to know how he could set up an aquaculture license for seaweed when he came home. He had a plan, and he was going to meet some company in Australia, so I said-----
Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
I welcome all our guests here today. The seafood industry is absolutely critical to our country. Aquaculture is hugely important to Ireland. I believe we produce the best seafood. Aquaculture creates great employment in my own county and, indeed, throughout the country. In County Kerry, we have many great companies. We have them in Cromane, Cahersiveen, Dingle and Kenmare to name just a few.
There are pitfalls. Reference has been made to improved infrastructure. It is a given that all piers and harbours need and deserve investment. I will take this opportunity to mention Cromane pier or landing facility. The campaign has been going on for well over 100 years, yet there is still no sign of a landing facility there. It is one of the oldest fishing villages in our country. Can anything be done in this regard? It is a general question and is perhaps not appropriate for this forum today.
I have previously mentioned the reopening of the east coast mussel seed fishery, which is very important. I cannot understand why common sense cannot prevail. As we speak, the seed is diminishing with different species such as crab and others there and the weather conditions are not improving to allow boats to access the seed. We need to up our game regarding these decisions.
The main pitfall, which I have raised time and time again, concerns the horrendous delays in the processing of aquaculture licences. I have raised this since I became a Member last year and I had been raising it for many years as a member of Kerry County Council. I have seen first-hand the impact these delays are having. I have witnessed cases where businesses wanted to expand and funding was available, but the licences were expiring and the next thing - bang. These were shovel-ready projects but they fell by the wayside. It is sad to see.
It is all very well for us to speak about the delays with aquaculture licences, and we have been speaking about this at most of the committee meetings I have attended. This meeting is specifically about aquaculture innovation but we cannot even process licences within an adequate timeframe. The idea of waiting ten, 15 or 20 years is an absolute scandal, and there is no other word for it. I cannot understand why this has been allowed to happen over many years. Obviously, people were sitting on their laurels, doing absolutely zero, zilch, nothing. It beggars belief. While I hate to say this, we must be the laughing stock not just of Europe but of the world due to this issue.
I would welcome, and not before time, all the parties being brought in so we can sort this issue once and for all. It is simply not good enough. I cannot believe I am speaking about it again today, when I think how long ago it was that I first raised the issue of the processing of licences. This is particularly important for Cromane. I live only a couple of minutes away from Cromane, so I know first-hand what I am talking about and how important it is to have these licences for the young men and women in that community. As Deputy Gallagher said, it creates employment in coastal communities and villages where no other employment is available. It is great to see those who are successful in getting planning permission to build a house and living and rearing a family in the area, or being able to afford to buy a car or build a house. We need to get our act together. This is the biggest issue I have faced since I came into the House, and it was an issue long before that. We need to get it sorted.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
I will make a few comments on the points the Deputy has raised. I am very familiar with Cromane and the area the Deputy is from and has been referring to. I see the Cromane ladies football team had a big win on Saturday in Mallow. Well done to them. It has been said to me any time I go down to Cromane that there would be no football teams there if there was no aquaculture. That is how important the sector is to the area, and I am aware of that.
I am aware also of the licensing delays there.
The Deputy mentioned the mussel seed fishery and I support his comments on that. There definitely needs to be movement in reopening the mussel seed fishery in Wexford Harbour. There has been an outrageous delay for the past two months in trying to even get a decision as to whether we will open the fishery or not. I have been in regular contact with the bottom mussel industry several times a week for the past two months trying to get some progress. Again, there are two different Departments and there are several agencies. There is the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Marine Institute, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority all involved in this process and trying to just make a decision. Now, there was a finding of an invasive species. That is fine. There is a protocol to follow to make sure the process is followed correctly such that we address that concern about an invasive species. That has been done and we have all the data now to make a decision, but we are still waiting about a month for that decision to be made. I agree with the Deputy that we need to see progress on that.
The Deputy mentioned licensing delays. Cromane is no different from anywhere else in the country. As I said, a lot of people down there are absolutely reliant on the industry - on the seafood industry, not just aquaculture - in terms of their employment and keeping people in the area in jobs, specifically young people, as the Deputy said.
I agree with what the Deputy said about bringing in all parties. Bringing in the Department and us to look at licensing has been mentioned a few times, but that also needs to look at the Marine Institute, possibly representatives from BIM and any agency, really, that has anything to do with the licensing process. ALAB would be part of that as well.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Thank you. Ms Bocquel, would you like to respond to any of Deputy Cahill's remarks?
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
Just to talk briefly about the mussel seed. When I was here in June I said we were optimistic of finding seed. BIM's role is just to survey for that seed. It was found. We were delighted about that but, as Ms Morrissey said, two non-native species were found, both of which, unfortunately, were species of national concern. BIM's role then was to convene a meeting of the alien species working group. As Ms Morrissey said, there has been a tremendous amount of work done on that point, but it is a very important regulation in protecting all the other species growing in the bays, and we certainly cannot risk there being any issues with that. That risk assessment is done and, as Ms Morrissey said, we are just waiting for a determination on it.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Go raibh maith agat. All our members have had an opportunity to speak so I will take my opportunity now. I have a number of questions. The first set is for the witnesses from the IFA. As has been said, the issue around licensing is the biggest single barrier to innovation and development in the sector, a sector, as Deputy Mac Lochlainn rightly said, that could play a much more significant role than it already does in our coastal communities, national economy and seafood sector. I think the issue of licensing is holding back, as I said, development and innovation because it strikes me that if you are on a renewal licence for ten, 15 or 20-odd years, you are subject to those conditions and subject to the conditions that were maybe current 25 or 30 years ago. There is very little room for expansion. There is very little room to develop, differentiate or innovate. I think that is the biggest barrier. Then it is obviously a barrier to entry for new entrants into the sector. The Government has allowed this to happen over a very long period. It is becoming rarer. There is no external agency outside of the Department that this can be pinned on. It is within a Government Department that this problem has arisen. We have discussed it today and previously in public session. We have also referred to it in some of our private meetings. It is a piece of work we are going to launch into. This is a new committee, as the witnesses can appreciate, but this is very much on our radar. At the end of the day, the Minister and the Government have to be accountable for this failure because it is holding back development, hurting innovation and creating real hardship for a sector that should be taking off.
As Mr. O'Sullivan mentioned, there is a growing population all around the world. There is a growing demand for protein. We have an ability here to produce quality protein in a very sustainable way. We need to tap into that. I have a number of questions in this regard.
In our guests' experience, is there a difference between finfish and shellfish in terms of delays or the causes of those delays? When talking about the need for a single piece of legislation, are we referring to the new fisheries (aquaculture) (amendment) Bill, the heads of which are being prepared at present? Has there been any engagement with the Department? Has it come to the organisations represented here to solicit their views and consult, even informally, as it drafts the heads of that Bill? I understand they are currently in development. I do not mean to repeat the question, but surely there must be a bottleneck somewhere in the Department. There could be several bottlenecks. Is it around the Marine Institute coming forward with the assessments? Is it just a lack of staffing? Is there anything the witnesses can see from their experience? We will definitely hear from the Department and the Minister what the issues are from their point of view. As people representing applicants, I would like to get a sense from our guests of where the issues lie. I will come back with another couple of questions afterwards.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
I will let Mr. O'Sullivan in after me. There is a difference between shellfish and finfish applications. In the finfish sector, there are requirements which are not present in the shellfish sector. Those requirements are around our environmental obligations under the habitats and birds directive. Applicants for a marine finfish licence are required to do an environmental impact assessment. That has to be appropriately assessed by the Marine Institute and the applicant needs a Natura impact statement. The environmental impact assessment is a huge body of work. As Ms McManus will attest, it takes many years.
On what we were lacking, Deputy Gallagher mentioned it in terms of engagement. A person applying for planning permission for a house would have engagement with the local authority or the Planning Authority in advance of sending in such a large application. That did not happen in the case of these licence applications. As a result, there were gaps in terms of what was required in environmental impact assessment, despite asking numerous times what would be required and what they would want to see in an environmental impact assessment for a marine finfish licence. We got no guidance from the regulatory body, which is the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We have moved on from that. Those assessments have been done and submitted to the Department. They are in the process of being assessed by the Marine Institute, as the scientific advisers, and then they will undergo public and statutory consultation at the same time.
In terms of addressing the bottleneck that the Cathaoirleach mentioned, yes, there is a bottleneck in terms of the Marine Institute carrying out appropriate assessments for both finfish and shellfish. For a shellfish application, there is no requirement to have an environmental impact assessment. However, appropriate assessments are carried out on a bay-wide basis for any licence that is either within or adjacent to an SAC or an SPA, which is actually the majority of our licences. While there is a bottleneck there, if it was addressed on its own, there would be another one down the line as there is a bit of over and back between Department and the Marine Institute in assessing what the latter has assessed, comments and things like that. There are bottlenecks throughout the whole system. Resources would address it, but they would have to be put in at every stage of the entire system.
The Cathaoirleach asked about engagement with the Department on the draft heads of the Bill. We have had engagement with the Department over the past two years, I would say, regarding those draft heads. Our understanding is that they are only to address section 19A(4), which is a provision in our current legislation that allows us to be operational while awaiting licence renewal. We have the privilege of enjoying our current licence conditions while waiting for that process to be renewed. Thankfully we have that; we would not be able to operate without it as we are waiting 15 or 20 years for those licences to be renewed. My understanding is that the draft heads of the Bill are going to address just that and that they will also contain some amendments that are required to deal with ALAB.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Does Ms Morrissey think that is a wasted opportunity, given that these heads in respect of a limited, albeit welcome and necessary, piece of work have been two years in the making and have still not been published?
Would the Department's time perhaps be better spent working on that all-encompassing Bill and making that work a lot faster?
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
Absolutely. It has been in the licensing review recommendations for eight years that there should be a review of the entire legislation and that there be a single Act written to deal with that. In doing that, it would address section 19A(4). I understand where we are at in terms of having to address section 19A(4) and we have no issue with that, as it needs to be addressed and is being addressed, but an opportunity is being missed to reform the entire legislation, as is required.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I have a couple of questions that relate to supports. We often talk about supports for the fishing industry in terms of the mackerel and wider pelagic species crisis around quota, and inshore fisheries and the challenges they are facing. The refrain we hear, which we understand and accept, is that fishers do not want supports, but to be able to fish. I am sure it is the same for those involved in aquaculture. They do not want supports. Rather, they want to be able to conduct their business well, create employment and turn a profit by producing quality protein. However, there has already been reference to storm damage from significant weather incidents and there will also be mass mortality incidents arising at different occasions. We have discussed one previously. Are there supports available? What further supports could be made available?
Regarding the oyster industry, it has already been referenced how patient one must be, not just in terms of the licensing process, but in terms of the life cycle of several of these species. There is a three-year life cycle for an oyster and if there are mass mortality incidents over a number of years in a bay, it can wipe out an entire industry in that region. Are there supports available in those instances? Has there been any communication from the Department or the Minister regarding supports for the oyster industry in particular and the aquaculture industry more broadly?
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
We made several iterations around supports in terms of storm damage after Storm Éowyn. There were a number of operators affected. Thankfully, not widely, but there were people affected. We have had biological challenges in the salmon industry in the last two years, 12 months or 18 months. In the Cathaoirleach's own constituency, there has been significant oyster mortality over the last two years.
To give a short answer, there are no direct supports available when those incidents occur, despite us asking several times. There is no mechanism to deal with that. This has been an issue for us. We have highlighted it several times under the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund, EMFAF. We hope that, in future, there will be a mechanism to allow us to at least access some of those funds. As the Cathaoirleach noted, if an operator experiences recurring mortality several years in a row, that will not be sustainable. With regards to recurring mortality, we also have to address the causes of the problem, and we are trying to do that as well.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I will reiterate my call that, where there are incidents such as storm damage, biological challenges or multi-year mortality events, targeted supports should be made available to aquaculture operators. As other speakers have mentioned, the economic and social benefits of these industries and this sector to our coastal communities cannot be overstated.
I will allow myself a level of discretion because I do it for everybody else. I have a couple of brief questions for BIM that relate to the topic of innovation in the aquaculture sector. I am concerned about a lack of opportunity and investment in innovation, especially compared to other countries. I am keen to hear about this from BIM's point of view. I appreciate BIM is not the Department and that this does not all land at BIM's feet. From BIM's particular perspective, though, what is happening in terms of engagement with third level institutions on training courses, skills and research and development? What is happening in the development in the aquaculture sector in terms of various species? In the last number of years, Spain and Portugal have innovated and diversified into sole, bass, bream and turbot. In Iceland, there has been considerable work on sole.
We heard a lot about Páirc na Mara in Connemara a number of years. I understand it is being developed primarily by Údarás na Gaeltachta but with BIM's involvement. Has there been any progress on that? What is the current state of play?
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
Notwithstanding all the challenges, there is a lot of innovation in the sector. I spoke earlier about some of our innovations on the finfish side but we are also involved in a number of innovations within the oyster sector. One of the challenges the industry has is the fact that quite a significant amount of the oysters we grow in Ireland are small. They are called twos and threes. They are small-sized oysters for which the market has all but disappeared. What we do grow in Ireland and grow it more successfully than any other country in Europe are the large oysters called speciale oysters. These oysters are a beautiful teardrop shape with a very high meat content and there is an enormous - almost unlimited - market for them. What we have been doing is looking at the innovations we can bring to allow producers who cannot currently grow them to grow them. We have been working with industry on this. We have been on a few foreign trips with the industry to see various technologies and have identified three technologies that are very successful and that we can work with producers to put on their farms to grow these speciale oysters. This is a really important innovation we are doing, one that has been adopted by a number of our clients and operators and has allowed them to access markets for which there is very significant demand. These sorts of innovation we are doing are very important across the sector.
In our aquatech sector, we are looking at lots of different innovations. We are coming at that from a slightly different perspective. We are looking in particular at companies that have traditionally serviced the fishing sector. If we look at Killybegs, for example, we have Cahir Engineering, which would have done a lot of engineering solutions; Swan-Net Gundry with nets; and Sea Quest, which does water pumps. We support them through our aquatech programme to service the growing global aquatech and aquaculture sector. For example, we brought 12 Irish companies to Aqua Nor in Norway in August with Enterprise Ireland. As a result of that engagement, the vast majority of them secured contracts to service the growing global aquatech sector. We are looking not only at innovating physically on the farms, but at how these companies can innovate to meet new market demands.
Regarding what we are doing in terms of third level, we have been engaging with the South East Technological University and UCD, both of which are keen to run master's programmes in aquaculture. We are exploring that with them. These things take a bit of time to develop but they are certainly two organisations that are very keen to work with us.
In terms of research and development, the Marine Institute is the agency with responsibility for marine research generally. BIM does a very small amount of applied research, so we work very closely with it. It has a fellowship scheme under which we have engaged a number of fellows to look at areas of particular interest to the industry in an applied way through the Marine Institute scheme, so that is a very good partnership.
Regarding the development of various species, there are a lot of challenges with that. It is very difficult to introduce a non-native species to the coast but where we can look at that opportunity is in the on-land system through circulating aquaculture systems. We are just about getting to the point where we feel some of these systems are starting to look like they could be commercially viable. There are a lot of systems that are in test globally. There are some in Norway, Denmark and further afield. They are looking at lots of different species such as salmon, turbot and shrimp. However, they are not yet at the point where they are commercially viable. The running costs are enormous and they have a critical point of failure if they were to lose power, so they are not quite commercially there, but it is likely that they will start to be viable over the next couple of years.
Certainly, that is where would see the opportunity to look at new species, particularly warm water prawns, which are the second most consumed seafood species in Ireland. There is a potential opportunity for us to look at that.
Páirc na Mara is a project stewarded by Údarás na Gaeltachta. We do not believe there is any change in the status of that at the moment. I think it has resubmitted an amended planning application for the project. That is something we would be keen to support.
Mr. Richard Donnelly:
We have expertise on the species noted. We have abalone farms already in the country. We have done Arctic char in the past as well as perch and eels. Where a lot of this technology is concerned and as Ms Bocquel alluded, it is a question of getting the economics right for those species. The expertise does reside in BIM for those species.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
We have some time left, so I propose to take another round of questions and answers. We will go for five minutes each. I call Deputy Mac Lochlainn followed by Senator Boyle and Deputy Gallagher.
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
I ask that we have a dedicated session in the new year looking at the issue of licensing. I ask that we invite the people here today - BIM, IFA Aquaculture, the Department of the marine, the Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board and the Marine Institute - for a dedicated session looking at licensing and how we can resolve this. I want to hear their ideas. I also would like to see a comparison with other countries. It has been said today that you would not face these types of delay elsewhere. Maybe we could indicate to the agencies coming before us that we will be looking for direct comparisons with other EU member states as it pertains to European legislation.
The other issue raised today is the need for legislative change. There are two topics I propose we deal with - the issue of licensing and what legislative change in one Act looks like. I ask that that be agreed by the committee in the new year.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Before we proceed, I will put those two proposals to the meeting. Proposal No. 1 is that we have a meeting early in the new year about licensing. Is that agreed? Agreed. Proposal No. 2 is that we have a separate meeting with regard to the legislation. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
The only place I ever want to go now is back to Donegal but there is an opportunity to visit some of the countries that do it in two years. That could be a worthwhile visit. I think the witness mentioned two countries, Greece and-----
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Get the shorts packed. We have agreed those two work items. The third is the piece of research Deputy Mac Lochlainn referenced. That would be an important starting point before we pack our bags, to have that comparative piece of research done. I ask members - perhaps the clerk can circulate this request to members not present at the meeting - for ideas around the terms of reference for that piece of research.
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
Legislative can wait for another few months.
I wish Ms Bocquel well in her new role. I had to check - Fáilte Ireland chief executive is a huge role. I wish her the best of luck.
On the points made about the Faroe Islands, I accept the coasts are different and the challenges will be different but it does not explain the huge gap in targets, for example. As I understand it, our own Government - correct me if I am wrong - set a target a number of years ago in terms of aquaculture.
It just has not been reached. From the perspective of BIM, Ms Bocquel should clarify the targets and why, in BIM's opinion, they were not reached. My understanding on the targets is that where we are at now is at less than half of the target set by the Government, while being fully aware of the challenges that we face.
In terms of global population food demands, obviously BIM looks at growing markets and growing food demands around the world. Clearly, these are huge opportunities. We know Irish agriculture does very well, particularly the beef sector, in terms of exports and meeting the global demand for food that is growing all the time. I want to get a sense of the frustration felt by BIM. Some of the challenges have been outlined in terms of the topography and types of coastlines around Ireland. That is fair enough but Scotland also faces into the Atlantic Ocean and experiences exposure to strong waters, starfish, etc. My guess is that Iceland has similar challenges. Ms Bocquel referenced the Faroe Islands and I defer to her on that but there must be countries that have equal challenges to Ireland but that have done a lot better than us. How do we meet our targets in the future? How do we ensure we have an industry that people can invest in and one that has a sustainable future? I would like to hear the reflections of the outgoing CEO on how we can meet those targets, do better and meet the food demands globally.
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
To clarify, we had a target of 81,000 tonnes. What is our current tonnage?
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
How much of that 81,000 tonnes was attributable to the bottom mussel industry?
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
That is 54,000 tonnes so we are substantially below our targets. Those were targets set with eyes wide open to all the challenges we face with licensing and so on. So we are underperforming.
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
There is no doubt but there are significant challenges there. The systemic issues in the system have been well articulated.
In respect of the question on food demand, there is enormous food demand. Aquaculture is the fastest growing protein sector in the world. For the first time last year the production of aquaculture outpaced the seafood coming from wild capture fisheries, which are stable globally. Obviously in Ireland we have had particularly bad news for 2026 but certainly globally, they are broadly remaining stable. So there is enormous potential for Ireland there not only as aquaculture producers but there is also the ability to premiumise our product. I have spoken previously to the committee about the phenomenal capacity we now have within our processing sector. The vast majority of our processors are multispecies processors that are able to process a lot of different species, obviously including salmon but also shellfish. There is an enormous opportunity for them globally with the investment that the State has made in 2022 and into 2023 under the Brexit adjustment reserve, BAR, funds. We now have one of the most modern processing sectors in Europe and we are seeing enormous ambition with these companies that are able to access the global demand in a way they could not previously. What they have is consistency of supply and are now able to provide the products in the formats their clients require at the pace and speed which they need.
Over 70% of all seafood consumed in Europe is imported. Importing is just a natural component of what is a very global seafood sector. We are growing a lot of food that we are processing here, we are exporting some and we are also importing it. There is huge opportunity with those global markets. France has been our number one export partner for the past number of years but we are working with Bord Bia to open new markets. For example, last year it opened a very strong market for us in Japan, and we are looking at other markets right across Asia but also in Europe. Europe is much easier for us to get to. We have very strong connections with Italy, for example, and we see lots of other opportunities there. Only 2% of the seafood that France imports is from Ireland, so, clearly, as a very close neighbour, there is very significant opportunity for us there. Again, it is a matter of working with Bord Bia to ensure we are really trying to capture some of those premium markets and add as much value as we possibly can to all the seafood we produce, whether we are catching and landing it, growing it in Ireland or importing it.
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
Finally, in fairness to Bord Iascaigh Mhara, a lot of the challenges our seafood sector faces are out of BIM's control. It can only work with what it has. I just want to say to Ms Bocquel as an outgoing chief executive that, in terms of quota, there is the current issue with mackerel and the overfishing that has happened in terms of aquaculture licensing, and there is the need for legislative change. It is important to say while BIM representatives are here to deal with this issue that there are a range of agencies that are not here that are responsible for this. I thank the witnesses for coming and dealing with our questions. As a committee that meets once a week, a Chathaoirligh, we are determined to grapple with the challenges that are there and try to help to make the sector stronger and to avail of the opportunity, as was mentioned. I thank Ms Bocquel and offer her my best wishes for her new role.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
I meant to wish Ms Bocquel well in her new role. It is good that she is moving on and moving up.
I think we all agree we have to work on the licences delay rapidly. Fifteen to 20 years is far too long. Aquaculture gives great employment around the coastline, even around Donegal. There is a lot of employment there and, as Mr. O'Sullivan says, when it is there it works away quietly. Nobody opens their mouth about it. It works away and it is there and it is great.
Ms Bocquel talked earlier about targeted supports. The Cathaoirleach mentioned it too. I hear from aquaculture people that sea lice is a problem and that jellyfish are coming in. I do not know if that affects mussels too. When you set up a fish farm or a mussel farm, you have three or four years, you are growing your product and then this comes and attacks your product. Are there any targeted supports there for these people? At the end of the day, they are providing work for people and they are growing their product and this is out of their control. Is there a targeted support there to help these people financially if things go wrong?
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
The short answer to the Senator is "Not currently". There are no specific financial supports there. BIM provides a range of supports. We provide non-financial support in terms of husbandry techniques and information. We have some sampling systems that can effectively provide a form of early warning to the farm. We provide a lot of technical support to the entire aquaculture sector in terms of trying to ensure that the farms are as resilient as they can possibly be. There are no targeted supports we can give in the event of a disaster through the funding mechanism we have at the moment. The EMFAF regulation has a specific provision for providing support in the event of what it calls market failure, which is again quite a narrow definition, but it needs an implementing decision from the Commission, that is, all the member states need to vote for it. We have had it only twice: once for Covid and a second time for the invasion of Ukraine.
It is very difficult to trigger that particular mechanism. That is what is available to us, so it is very narrow. Certainly, we provide all of the supports that we can but we are limited in what we can access.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
Ms Bocquel is correct. The implementing decision is needed from the Commission. That was done during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we had a targeted scheme to help us out then. In terms of the invasion of Ukraine, despite numerous asks, nothing was implemented in terms of support for the aquaculture sector. Ms McManus referred to the increased costs. Around that time we saw a huge increase in costs on everything, really, when the invasion of Ukraine first occurred. The European Commission did allow for that provision. There was an implemented decision under the EMFAF to facilitate that but, despite numerous asks of the Government, we were not successful in securing any direct funds.
Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)
That is something we should try to address moving forward. If Mr. O'Sullivan is growing his mussels for three years and something happens that he is not in control of, he is wiped out. He is back to square one. Three years of work is down the drain. That is very unfair. Agriculture gets supports, as does everything else. There is no reason aquaculture should not get support. I have seen it myself in fish farms which might be farming for three years and then the fish die. They then go to fishmeal or are destroyed. That whole farm and the jobs are wiped out. It takes three years to build it back up again. There should be a support mechanism put in place if this does happen. Whether it is mussels or finfish or whatever, there should be something there because at the end of the day the employer and the people who own it can only carry it so long.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
I thank the Senator for his support in those areas, because it is something that has never been addressed. We can suffer on if we have problems. Financially we try to keep going and get going again the next year. The title of this meeting is "Aquaculture Innovation and Development". We, or I, have not spoken about innovation as such. We have spoken about lack of development but this is just to say the industry has innovated down the years. It definitely is the case in the salmon industry where people now control their feeding from satellites so the fish get fed every day and are not hampered by bad weather. They can control the whole thing. I have seen a hub in Castletownbere where they have a wall full of monitors and they can see the fish above and below the water and can control the whole thing. The thing about aquaculture is that it is not confined to salmon or shellfish. There is a scheme involving multitrophic aquaculture, which is a combination of finfish, shellfish, algae and so on. It has the least environmental impact. It has good control over the water. There are opportunities there. The whole potential of algae and seaweeds has not been explored at all in this country. There is a lot of work being done in laboratories around extracting compounds that can be good for creating diabetic medicines and stuff like that. There is a lot that can go on there in a smaller scale. When I look at other countries such as Spain and Galicia, they are probably growing 300,000 tonnes of shellfish. We do not need to be on that scale. I am aware that our coastline is difficult, especially the west coast, but there is always some place for shelter. When we started out, the first five years we were wiped out because our gear was wrong. We developed better mooring systems and growing systems. We changed over to continuous rope and moved away from plastics. We reduced the plastic content of our mediums for growing shellfish by 90%. We use biodegradable cotton and reuse the rope. We are using the same continuous rope for over 20 years. We are conscious of not using up world resources and keeping away from plastics.
For example, in the beginning if our floats were damaged they were dumped. That was 20 kg of plastic that was going somewhere for recycling. We now repair them. We learned how to weld them and stuff like that. We passed that information around the country to other producers. We are in a circular economy really. When we talk about aquaculture, we are not confining it to just shellfish or finfish. There are other opportunities there. It is happening in other countries. A couple of years ago I looked up videos of algae production for China. As far as the eye can see they are growing algae, which goes into the supermarkets and the video shows all the different products they have. We have the technology. We have the intelligence in this country and the education to develop those industries more and to micromanage them into medicines and pharmaceuticals. That is all I wanted to say because it might seem we have neglected innovation, but we are continuously innovating.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
That reminds me of a question I should have put earlier about seaweeds. I had not considered algae. Has the IFA members who are active in that? What is the nature of their farms? Where are their markets? Can the IFA briefly give me a bit of background on it, because it is something where there is definitely room for growth?
We spoke about the idea of a one-stop shop for licensing and how helpful that would be. When it comes to supports, that approach of a one-stop shop would be very useful, but also when it comes to responding to mortality events and crises within the sector. This may be a product of where aquaculture sits in Irish public life. Is it sea fisheries? Is it agriculture? Where does it fit in? There are probably myriad agencies the sector is left dealing with between inland fisheries, BIM, the Marine Institute, ALAB, which we mentioned, the EPA and many others including various Government Departments, albeit that there is now one with responsibility. What are the thoughts on that one-stop shop model for the other sides of the business, not just the licensing?
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
Regarding the algae, I was talking to a producer yesterday in the car when I was coming up. I asked him how he was getting on as they are launching a couple of products soon. There is a marine research centre a few miles from me that is working with Teagasc on algae that can be introduced into the feed of cattle to reduce the methane. I was at a Teagasc meeting where it came up for discussion and there was a presentation. I said, "I know the outfit that are doing that." The cattle were rejecting it a little bit at the beginning because it was just sprinkled on top, but they are incorporating it now into the pellets for feeding. They can reduce the methane by 80% in the cattle. Whether that is right, wrong, or true, they have to prove that. What I am saying is there are opportunities in lots of different directions that we are touching on and having a look at but not finishing and seeing where they are going. There is plenty of money going into research in universities that have the capacity to do this type of work. There is a lot of potential. Like a lot of research and development: you win some; you lose some, but I feel there is a lot. If there are seaweed lines in place, they are not that heavy so storms will not affect them as much. Whereas, in the case of mussel lines, there could be 25 tonnes or 30 tonnes on them. There is weight on them so the swell will affect them more. There might be 3 tonnes, 4 tonnes or 5 tonnes of seaweed flapping around the place growing and absorbing carbon, nitrogen and phosphates from the water. They are very good at that.
I am not a scientist; I just pick up on stuff and listen. There are a lot of harvest opportunities there that we let go. That seems to be a feature of what happens in Ireland. We start something but we do not finish it. Then, it is about other countries. They have taken over the show. They are five or ten years ahead of us.
Ms Teresa Morrissey:
The Cathaoirleach asked whether we have members. We do. We have a number of members operating in the seaweed market. Mr. O'Sullivan touched on some of the opportunities for them and challenges they face. They face the common challenge we all face in that they need licences. They have to go through the same licensing process. One of the things that also concerns them is accessing the markets or, at least, trying to develop markets and how to organise the process and get it going.
The Cathaoirleach also asked about the one-stop shop in terms of responding to events. It would be great if we had a one-stop shop. At least we would get an answer if we are trying to get a response to an event. The Cathaoirleach is aware that in his constituency we have been trying to get a response to an event for longer than I would like. I hope there will be some movement on that in the coming weeks, but it is difficult because there are too many moving parts. Depending on what the matter might be, there are different agencies with different responsibilities. That is an issue for us.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I thank Ms Morrissey. I will give the final word to BIM in response to any of the issues that have been raised.
Ms Caroline Bocquel:
Seaweed has a great deal of potential but the key, as the Cathaoirleach mentioned, is finding the markets where we are going to be able to achieve high values for seaweed. Through our innovation studio, we are working with some Irish companies that are looking to valorise it into the nutraceutical industry and, as Mr. O'Sullivan mentioned, into food additives and the pharma sector. We know that in order to valorise it, because we need so much of it by volume in order to extract the powders that are needed, producers need to get the very highest price. In the past year, we appointed somebody who is working on this matter. It is a complex area, but on in which there is a lot of potential. The vast majority of seaweed is still coming from wild harvest rather than aquaculture. I will pass over to my colleague Mr. Campbell in case he wants to say a few words.
Mr. Rory Campbell:
BIM has been working on seaweed for around a decade, but we have primarily been focusing on the technical aspects, namely how to grow it, how to create a seaweed hatchery and how to supply seeded string to the industry, and the very basic husbandry techniques.
A twin-track approach is needed when it comes to developing the seaweed industry. We need to develop the market as much as the technical expertise. The two have to come together because there is no point being able to grow seaweed if we do not have a market to sell the product on to. The two have to very much come together. That is what we are planning on working on in the future.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I thank the witnesses very much for their responses. I look forward to seeing the fruits of that work, because I think this is an area that Ireland can really expand in, notwithstanding the barriers that are faced by current operators, in particular in terms of licensing.
That draws the business of this meeting to a close. I thank the witnesses for their attendance, co-operation and responses. From our point of view, this has been a really interesting meeting. The message has been very clearly received. The witnesses need not be in any doubt about that. We have all learned a lot as well. There will be more for this committee to do on the issue in order to hold the Government to account and, effectively, get answers from the Minister on the delays with licensing but also to keep a watch on the implementation of the strategy and ensure the implementation group gets off the ground, two years’ in, and begins holding the document to account and interrogating its delivery. The witnesses can rest assured that this will be the first of many engagements in this space. We will bring other stakeholders in as well to hear their take on it. Chief among them, no doubt, will be the Department and the Minister.
I also thank members for their contributions during the meeting. They were good, pointed and well informed. They contributed to the meeting. All that remains for me to do is wish Ms Bocquel the very best. That has already been done several times. This is not her first time coming before the committee. We appreciate her participation and engagement throughout and wish her and her colleagues all the very best in the time ahead.
Mr. Finian O'Sullivan:
I again thank the members for asking all the important and pertinent questions that allowed us to elaborate on our issues. We appreciate that. We also appreciate the fact that we have a Minister who is engaging with us as well. He is a very busy man. We would appreciate any help he can get from this committee.
Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
I think I speak for all of us in saying that, as a committee, we are committed to doing right by the seafood sector more broadly, coastal communities and the marine environment. There is a natural imperative for us to support the aquaculture industry to fulfil those three objectives. I thank everyone very much. There are no further matters for discussion. The joint committee stands adjourned.