Mr. Jean-Paul Deveau:

Deputy Pringle made a comment on the sustainability of the industry up to now. To date the harvest has been carried out in a sustainable manner and the quantities of seaweed that have been harvested allow for sustainability. Up to now the companies that have been purchasing the seaweed have been purchasing it in areas where nobody else is purchasing seaweed. There has been almost a de factosituation in which there is only one commercial entity operating in a geographical area. The challenge we see - and we have seen this before - is competitive activity, where two commercial entities are trying to get a certain quantity of seaweed from the same geographical area. We have started to see that kind of behaviour in Ireland and, because the companies are competitive, they do not tend to share information with each other. When one organisation is expecting some seaweed to be there it is not, and vice versa. That would be the challenge if it turned into a situation in which over-harvesting could occur in the future. Licensing would be able to deal with such issues in a way that would stop that from happening.