Mr. Tony Barrett:

I thank the committee for inviting me. I was CEO of Arramara Teoranta until 2007, when I left to form Irish Seaweed Processors limited for the extraction of bioactive compounds from Irish seaweed.

Since the 1960s Arramara Teoranta purchased and processed only one seaweed, ascophyllum nodosum, from harvesters who did not hold a licence but claimed traditional harvesting rights. In May 2014 Arramara Teoranta was formally transferred to ownership of Acadian Seaplants Limited. In March 2014 Arramara Teoranta applied to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government for a foreshore licence to harvest ascophyllum nodosum from north Mayo to north Clare, driving suspicions that Arramara Teoranta is being used as a proxy to gain control of Irish seaweed resources.
In January 2014 the Joint Sub-Committee on Fisheries published its report on promoting sustainable rural, coastal and island communities. The main focus of the report is on the social and economic situation of rural, coastal and island communities and the promotion of sustainable industries. The main industries discussed by the sub-committee with stakeholders were inshore fisheries, sea angling, seaweed, aquaculture and tourism, particularly marine tourism. Údarás na Gaeltachta advised the sub-committee on matters relating to the seaweed industry. According to the report, Údarás na Gaeltachta identified to the sub-committee that the principal issue in developing the seaweed processing industry is the regulation of supply, and that investors would be unlikely to provide or secure capital funding when uncertainty surrounds the supply of the raw material to be processed. Údarás na Gaeltachta cited to the sub-committee the case of the state of Nova Scotia in eastern Canada, where the state leases out an area and the company awarded the lease is responsible for sustainable harvesting of the seaweed. It explained that in Canada at the practice is to cut 1 ft. per annum, which is done from boats, but at present nobody in Ireland is responsible for the sustainable harvesting of seaweed and people take seaweed off the rock and the plant is gone. Based on this advice the sub-committee recommended that the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Environment, Community and Local Government resolve the regulatory licensing issues which pose an impediment to the development of the seaweed industry.
In A Guide to Commercially Important Seaweeds on the Irish Coastwritten by Jim Morrissey, Dr. Stefan Kraan and Professor Michael-----