Mr. Donal Maguire:

As Mr. Whooley has mentioned we have done a great deal of work of seaweed. The most recent project funded by the Marine Institute under its research programme was administered by BIM on its behalf. We have perfected the technique for hatching and growing seaweed so that one can seed lines, a bit like mussel lines, and put them out in the sea to produce special individual species of high value seaweed, such as Deputy Ó Cuív mentioned. There is considerable potential in this field. As it is regarded as an aquaculture process it will require aquaculture licensing. The first licences of this sort will be applied for shortly in west Cork. We have done a great deal of work in the past with our colleagues in Údarás na Gaeltachta on using the existing seaweed resource and finding higher value niches in the nutraceutical area for it as an additive to various cosmetics. Of course, some of the finest golf greens and some of the best racehorses run on seaweed by-products. There is much work being done to try to maximise the value of the existing resource and to develop a new farmed resource. The farming of seaweed is very big business around the world. The Chinese farm millions of tonnes of seaweed every year and use it for a multiplicity of purposes, including shipping it to Japan, where it is used to wrap around sushi products. It is an emerging technology.

Finding sheltered areas on the Irish coastline may be a challenge but we have no doubt that it will be a significant industry in the future. The important thing to note is that in the medium term - ten to 20 years time - there will be no single species fish farms. We will be looking inevitably at multi-trophic aquaculture. Ideally there will be a fed farm, which is a fin fish type farm, perhaps a salmon farm and a seaweed farm in the stream of that to make the best use of any enrichment coming from it and the seaweed will probably be used in turn to feed valuable shellfish or become an ingredient in animal feeds of one kind or another, including fin fish feeds. There is no doubt that farming up and down through the trophic levels of the sea, starting with seaweed and then moving through shellfish and up to fin fish and integrating these into unified systems, will be the way forward for fish farming.