Mr. Damien Melvin:

This goes back to the licensing issue of who should or should not apply for a licence. It is hard to know. Ideally, everybody should be allowed to apply for a licence if he or she so wishes, regardless of whether it is for personal use or if he or she wants to make some money out of it. People have a vested interest in it. Alternatively, the businesses which process the seaweed could be given a larger licence and subcontract out the work to harvesters. Perhaps that is an idea worth considering. Perhaps licences might be given on the basis of scale. We harvest less than 50 tonnes a year, but applications have been submitted for the harvesting of ten of thousands of tonnes. I do not understand how our licence needs to be treated in the same as that of a business harvesting 40,000 tonnes.

That is why I suggested this should be done at a local level, though perhaps not by the county councils. I only raised them because they exist in each area. This requires intimate knowledge of an area of coastline, be it Clew Bay, Killala Bay or Sligo Bay. A decision on an area's suitability for harvesting seaweed must not be made by an individual behind a desk. If it is done locally there is a possibility that it can be managed and the resource can be harvested sustainably so it can be reaped year after year. Some areas are decimated for years after harvesting, so this needs to be managed properly. Regardless of what organisation is in question, the key is that the resource be managed properly.