Ms Caroline Bocquel:

SmartBay is a not-for-profit company established in 2011 to take receipt of and spend a Higher Education Authority, HEA, grant that was provided to establish a national testing demonstration platform in Galway Bay. At that time, there was no possibility of any State agency being able to operate a grant of that nature because of our inability to hire people. The partners, which were the National University of Ireland, NUI, Galway, Dublin City University, DCU, and the Marine Institute, established a not-for-profit company with the specific purpose of managing and promoting the test site. The grant expired in June 2016, so it has a much narrower role now which is simply to promote the test site. It is doing that on behalf of the Marine Institute and the SEAI and will be reviewed annually.