Dr. Cecil Beamish:

I shall first clarify the points made by Deputies Pringle and Harrington. I sought to convey the position on the Natura sites and perhaps I did not convey it fully. The process is long and detailed and one can only reach the endpoint if one has built all of the previous steps along the way. The task was set to gather information on the pelagic environment, living marine organisms, migrating sea mammals and fish species, the tidal environment and migrating birds.

Data has had to be collected across 91 bays and estuaries. A one-year dataset on migrating birds, for example, is not adequate for an environmental decision. One must build a time series. Simply gathering information one year does not get one there. The process has frustrated everybody involved. It is very complicated and slower than anybody wants but it is what is required.

A significant part of the process has been a huge data collection exercise across bays and estuaries. A bay may be 30 miles long and 20 miles wide. It may be an even larger area of water. The focus in the first number of years has largely been on data collection. Analysis of the data has been carried out by the agencies of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, particularly the Marine Institute. BIM has also worked on the data in relation to fisheries matters. The data as analysed is provided to the National Parks and Wildlife Service to allow it to decide what the conservation objectives will be for a particular area. Without knowing the conservation objectives, there is no target by reference to which one can judge the potential damage of any proposals to which consent is sought. Creating the information and analysing it as required to set the detailed conservation objectives of designated areas has been the second stage of the process.

Once conservation objectives are set, the appropriate assessments can be made of every licence application and fisheries plan proposed. At this point, appropriate assessments, which run to hundreds of pages and include detailed technical argument, have been finalised in relation to three bays. It is not that we have got to the end point in relation to the 91 bays, but we have started down the road. Other assessments are at various stages of being worked up. The final step is to make decisions on the basis of the appropriate assessments which come out at the end of the process. The Cromane-Castlemaine mussel fisheries are the first that will come out of the process. They are almost there in terms of a decision. The objective, clearly, is to work through all the other bays. It goes back and forwards a bit. One gets the data and when it has been reviewed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service it may transpire that all the data required to make a decision has not been obtained. Further specific data collection on a particular species may be required. It is an iterative process and is a very major undertaking.

At the conclusion of the process, we will have built up a dataset on all major inshore waters which are seafood producing. The dataset will be equally applicable to any other activity proposed in a bay. It does not just have a benefit for fisheries and aquaculture. Any other development, including a pipeline, wind farm or marina, can be appropriately assessed by reference to the dataset to ensure compliance with habitats protection. That should allow decisions on development to be taken much more quickly. The ammunition will be there. The data has a wider application than just to our work on fisheries and aquaculture but it must be done in this context. It also means that when we get there, we can consider new proposals which arise for developments over and above what is currently in place. While all of this process been going on, the position has been that aquaculture activities have continued at the same level where they already exist. They have not ceased. That people have not been stopped from continuing their activities has been an important element of the process.

There is a huge variety of inshore fishing activity in Ireland. While it is technically the case that the Common Fisheries Policy governs all living marine organisms from the shore to a point 200 miles out at sea, management measures have not been developed for many species. Only a certain number of species are subject to quotas, tax and other limitations. For many inshore species, few if any Common Fisheries Policy positions exist. There are provisions to govern the registration of fleet vessels but there are few at species level other than provisions on minimum sizes and other technical provisions. We have many inshore fisheries which are not heavily impacted by the Common Fisheries Policy and it is very much open to debate as to whether that is a good or bad thing. It is a question of whether they should be subject to further management. Decisions in that context are dependent on the availability of information, the ability to manage and the ability to enforce. We could go through a whole raft of inshore fisheries ranging from lobster and crab fisheries to whelks and crawfish. There is a huge multiplicity of things that can be done and that fishermen are still able to do. The specific situation in relation to area 6 is a result of poor white-fish stocks there and the need to rebuild them. Poor stocks for many years led to the introduction of a so-called "cod recovery plan" which then led to a series of other restrictions on activity. There is a great deal of detail as to how the situation in area 6 has evolved which can be provided.

Deputy Martin Ferris referred to the issue of sea lice. I have not read the specific article he mentioned but sea lice are endemic. They are part of the marine environment and hosted by many wild species. The issue with fin fish farming is the extent to which concentrations of sea lice build up and are managed. They cannot be eliminated as they are endemic in the environment. It is a question of managing levels. A great deal of work has been done in Ireland over the years to develop a stringent, independent and transparent system to manage sea lice on finfish farms. It is a very open system and the results are available to everybody including on the Internet. Farms are independently inspected and the consequences of inspections are clearly set out in the relevant protocols. The protocols are procedures attached to the licences for farms and are legally enforceable. In the event that treatment does not reduce sea lice levels, there is a racheting up of the actions which must be taken up to the point that the stock can be removed. It is a stronger and more transparent system than we see in other major salmon producing countries. In terms of the impact of sea lice, there has been a long and energetic debate between the angling and aquaculture community on the impact of salmon farms on wild stocks. The Department takes its advice from the Marine Institute which is our scientific adviser and has expertise built up over many years. Its most recent report is a paper published in March 2013 in the Journal of Fish Diseases. The paper is the result of a nine year study on 350,000 migrating salmon and is comprehensive.

Effectively, they inoculated one population of migrating salmon against sea lice and did not inoculate another population, and then measured the returning fish in both cases. There was a 94% or 95% rate of mortality at sea beyond the range of the sea lice, depending on whether the fish had been inoculated. It added 1% to the mortality rate.

To some extent, the target of the debate is often missed. Both salmon farmers and anglers need sea lice to be controlled. Not tightly controlling them in is in the interest of neither party. Farmed salmon do not thrive if there is a build-up of sea lice. Whatever one's view on the extent to which the risk to wild salmon exists, it must increase if the concentrations of sea lice increase. It is in the interest of both parties that sea lice are controlled. The regulatory system in place is designed to control the level of sea lice for that purpose in the interests of all parties. They both have the same objective. Neither party can eliminate sea lice, which are an endemic part of the environment. It is a lively debate that will always be there as long as fish aquaculture exists. It is simply a debate about how to effect controls.