Mr. Donal Maguire:

I will do my best to address the questions raised both by Deputies Harrington and McNamara about the potential for development within the aquaculture sector, the need to try to maintain the value of the products from it, and the question as to why the Scottish salmon industry, which has a volume of 160,000 tonnes, which started about the same time as ours, has been more successful in increasing its volume.

On the question that if we are successful ultimately in building up one or more of these larger-scale offshore farms, are we in danger of somehow undervaluing the product from them, the answer to that is"no" because the intention is that these would be organic certified farms.

Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM, along with the industry, has led the way in developing organic certification. We still maintain a number of very high-quality product certification standards, 2 ISO 65, to ensure quality, traceability, environmental sustainability and organic status. It is hoped the bottom-grown mussels sector will gain Marine Stewardship Council certification. We are constantly working on ways of finding market niches and supporting the industry through doing that.

With regard to the potential from aquaculture, in the immediate to medium term the targets for that are set out in Food Harvest 2020. Those targets are ambitious but we believe they are achievable. There is a difficulty with licensing and it is that issue with licensing that is the difference between Scotland and Ireland. The Scots got off to a roaring start with salmon farming and in many ways it is because the ownership of the foreshore in Scotland is vested in the Crown Estate Commissioners, a rather ancient body but one with a strong commercial imperative, which took a decision that it wanted to push this industry hard. Also, in the hinterland of the highlands of Scotland the land ownership is very different from Ireland. In general, it is owned by a small number of people in very large estates. At the time they also were enjoying income from this particular industry. It got up to a critical mass very quickly, with little local opposition. It also had a rapid licensing system in place. As a result of confusion and difficulties, the industry in Ireland became embroiled in confusion over the sea lice issue and the famous rod licence debate. It got snarled up at that stage and never got past the starting point because of difficulties with perception around the industry.

Unfortunately, in the interim, there was the 2007 judgment of the European Court of Justice against Ireland, which found that our aquaculture licensing system was essentially delinquent in so far as it did not properly take account of the birds and habitats directives. There was a flaw in our system and as colleagues from the other agencies have described, the State side of things, including BIM and all the agencies here, have been playing catch-up to try to bring our system back into full compliance.

To answer Deputy Ó Cuív's question about the identity of the competent authority, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is the consenting authority and as the consenting authority the onus falls on it to then satisfy the requirements of the directives. Satisfying the requirements of the directives requires us to be able to carry out appropriate assessments in accordance with the directives. The difficulty then was that when we went to do that we found that the necessary information and structures were not in place to allow us do it.

There has been a grave difficulty in bringing the State into compliance with these issues. Progress is being made but it is very slow. We are all frustrated by that. Even the officials in the Department suffer the same frustration, but there is no way around it. We must deal with this matter and get it out of the way, and it will be crucial to get it out of the way if we are to achieve the targets set out in Food Harvest 2020.