Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Licensing and Harvesting of Seaweed in Ireland: Discussion

6:40 pm

Mr. Jean-Paul Deveau:

I will deal with the question on the employees of the company. In Canada, the workers have the right to unionise as they see fit. That is not something we have an opinion on. It is up to the workers to decide whether they want to unionise.

The second question related to seaweed harvesters. The seaweed harvesters are located in many different geographical areas, and every year we have pre-harvest meetings. We invite all the harvesters for one particular area to come and sit down with us and we go over issues such as new safety regulations or issues in respect of the harvest. We give them a form so that they can voice their concerns and have a good two-way dialogue back and forth in that kind of environment. We have five such meetings covering different geographical areas, and that allows everybody to attend those meetings. We do that before the harvest begins so that it does not interfere with the harvest in that particular area.