Ms Tara McCarthy:

We thank the joint committee for the invitation to address it. The invitation specifically referenced a wish to speak about issues concerning the fishing industry and our annual report for 2014. In that regard, I should note that our annual report for 2015 has been signed off and is being translated. It will be available to the committee when laid before the Oireachtas in the coming weeks.

On the issues concerning the fishing industry, the most significant live issue for the sector, like many others, is Brexit; specifically how an island nation with a tradition of sharing waters with the United Kingdom will operate effectively after its departure from the European Union. We are not yet in a position to know for certain, but it is clear that a hard Brexit scenario would place huge pressure on the Irish fleet by removing a huge section of its fishing grounds. Like most other observers, we must await the shape the UK exit negotiations will take and see how the Common Fisheries Policy will interpret Brexit.

While decisions on Brexit are matters for the Government, BIM is contributing to an inter-agency and departmental group on the issue - the Food Wise 2025 high level implementation committee. BIM is supporting the industry through economic analysis and mapping the supply chain for the top five performing species in our key markets to establish price margins at every point of the chain and how we can use this information to minimise the effects of Brexit in these categories. From a market perspective, it is important to note that the industry has faced many challenges in the recent past, including that presented by the Russian ban on imports in 2014 and the massive fall in demand from our largest non-EU market, Nigeria, which accounted for 46% of fish exports in 2015. It is a testament to the resilience of the industry that we surmounted these challenges, with exports increasing by 7% to €564 million last year and the domestic market up 6% to €350 million. The Irish seafood sector is performing well and, in addition to the UK market, we have strong sales in the European Union, at €388 million; Nigeria and north Africa, at €98 million; and Asia, at €47 million.

To provide some perspective on the global opportunity, seafood is and has been on trend for some time. The macro drivers supporting consumer decisions are all in our favour – a growing population, an incessant drive towards healthy natural foods, a need for convenience, a demand for sustainability and traceability pressurising other protein choices. There is scope for considerable growth, with the global demand for seafood projected to grow by 50% by 2030. By 2050 the world’s population will be more than 9 billion, 34% higher than today, and we are increasingly turning to the sea for a protein rich and healthy food solution.

While Irish seafood contributes €1 billion in GDP to the national economy, the sector is not currently structured to leverage all of the drivers to the maximum. Improvements are, therefore, required in the industry. We know that it is fragmented at every level of the supply chain and that in many sectors there is an effective cap on production. We also know that we must attract talent to the industry, that we should be leveraging our work on sustainability more, that we should be doing more to communicate that point of difference to international markets and that we could and should add more value to our catch and aspire to working with higher margins. While knowing all of this puts us some of the way on the path to a solution, we have some distance to travel.

In the past year BIM has focused on developing an integrated and strategic approach to core priorities for the agency and the industry. We have further developed partnerships with our sister agencies and outside expertise in order to deliver that streamlined approach and are engaging more effectively with our most important audiences, the sea fisheries and aquaculture sectors, to articulate our integrated approach. That approach is based on the identification and prioritisation of four pillars of focus for the delivery of our services - skills, sustainability, innovation and competitiveness. Each seeks to address a priority issue for the sector: addressing the skill needs of the industry and developing a pool of talent through training; building added value through the creation of a lexicon for sustainability; looking for opportunities to add more value to our product through innovation; and seeking to capture and optimise the value available in the market through greater competitiveness. Each and every pillar is related, interconnected and, to a certain degree, dependent on the other.

Let me begin with the issue of skills. Traditionally BIM has delivered training to fishing communities through its two colleges in Greencastle and Castletownbere, as well as through mobile coastal training units. This year we will deliver 207 courses in 25 locations, catering for some 1,700 students. While this is a significant effort, we know that more is needed. To date, we have been focused on the technical skills required to operate in the industry, but we realise we must also address the provision of business skills, innovation skills and sustainability skills to ensure we support the businessmen and women who are seeking to grow the industry. We are looking to develop a talent pipeline that will offer the industry relevant and recognised qualifications to support its needs from boat to farm to factory to shop.

With our objective to upskill and develop a systematic approach to training provision, improving safety at sea continues to be a priority for BIM. With commercial fishing universally acknowledged as one of the most hazardous professions in the world, BIM developed and has successfully implemented the enhanced safety scheme, a programme of grant aid towards safety training and new innovative personal flotation devices, PFDs, with integrated personal locator beacons, PLBs. Under this highly successful scheme, over 1,600 fishermen have been trained to date. There is sanctioned grant aid for 1,546 PFDs with integrated PLBs. To further promote the programme and encourage fishermen to wear PFDs while at sea, BIM initiated a major award winning safety awareness advertising and public relations campaign in January this year. Entitled "Live to Tell the Tale", the campaign was born out of the stark fact that 53 fishermen and fisherwomen had lost their lives at sea in the past ten years and that last year alone four fishermen had lost their lives at sea. Our research showed that despite more than 52% of fishermen personally knowing someone who had been lost at sea, over half of them did not wear a personal flotation device and that many of them could not swim. As a result of the campaign which featured real fishermen David Massey and Gerald Copeland, the number of training places increased by 23%. Thankfully, to date in 2016, we have had the lowest rate of fatalities at sea in the fisheries sector and, through the numbers enrolled on courses and signing up for PFDs, we believe we have helped to prompt a seismic change in attitude in the fishing community.

Our second pillar focuses on sustainability.

Sustainability has become a critical requirement for accessing higher premium markets and doing business with global food businesses. Working in partnership with Bord Bia's Origin Green charter is central to our sustainability agenda. We have aligned all our environmental management systems and accreditations for aquaculture, fisheries and processing to the Origin Green programme and our robust standards are a first stage of entry to Origin Green, ensuring that our industry is demonstrating high standards in responsible fishing, green processing and environmental management systems for aquaculture.

In fisheries, we are in a time of great change, with the implementation of the landing obligation and a stated desire to move to maximum sustainable yields on all our stocks by 2020. BIM is driving the agenda in terms of studies on new fishing gear technologies that will work in line with the landing obligation to improve sustainability and fishing effort.

Our third area of focus is innovation. We are looking to drive a cultural shift in industry in this space. Innovation is a catch-all word that can have lots of different meanings. Often, however, it is limited to adding value to products. I would like us to be more adventurous when it comes to innovation. Innovation is an attitude and a behaviour. It is examining the things that we do everyday and challenging ourselves on how to do them better and differently. Innovation has a place in every part of the supply chain and our businesses.

We have an excellent infrastructure in place to deliver expertise and technology to industry through BIM's Seafood Development Centre, SDC, in Clonakilty. This facility is now offering seafood companies access to in-house seafood technologists to develop new and innovative products and packaging without having to commit to capital investment. We have also further developed our research capability this year with Irish and international partnerships, including Teagasc and Nofima, a Norwegian research agency. We are considering a ten-year plan to build our research capability in BIM and the SDC to offer industry the best Irish and international research insights that will drive their business.

Competitiveness is about supporting the creation of value and the attainment of maximum sustainable profitability. BIM is systematically examining the essential conditions, or the natural endowments of our sector to achieve growth. Four categories have been identified to help grow competitiveness: business environment; physical infrastructure; clusters and firm sophistication; and knowledge and talent.

Let me focus on clusters and relevant partnerships as one of the ways to build our capability in this area. Our China council, in partnership with Bord Bia, has created a framework for discussion. We are also in ongoing discussions with Teagasc to understand the learnings from producer groups in farming and with Norwegian research agency Nofima to benchmark our industry against the external community. Transparency of information and open communication channels will be key to improving and making progress in this space.

I am conscious that the four pillars to which I have alluded are not the panacea to all the external issues that can affect this industry, but I am confident that they will provide a clear route to achieving the ambitious growth targets set out for the sector in the Government's Food Wise 2025 report and Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth: An Integrated Marine Plan for Ireland. The vision that we have signed up to is Ireland as the international leader in high value differentiated seafood products that satisfy growing domestic and international demand for nutritious, safe, responsibly and sustainably produced food. This is an attractive vision. Realising it will require investment.

The Government has clearly demonstrated its support for achieving the ambitions of the sector with an increase in BIM's annual budget from €18.5 million in 2014 to €39 million in 2016. This increase is largely as a result of the €241 million seafood development plan to be delivered under the European Maritime Fisheries Fund, EMFF, which will include a range of support measures for the Irish fishing, processing and aquaculture sectors. Only last week, we saw the announcement of €12 million funding under the EMFF operational programme to seven fisheries local action groups, FLAGs. These groups, dotted around our coastline, comprise local actors from the fisheries and aquaculture sectors and others with a strong interest in fostering the development of our coastal communities. The funding will be available to the FLAGs over the four-year period from 2017 to 2021 and is an eight-fold increase on the €1.5 million that was available under the previous scheme. As the State agency responsible for providing a range of administrative and technical supports to the FLAGs, we were delighted with the significant increase in funding for the programme.

BIM will also administer and manage the funds for a range of grant aid schemes under the EMFF, including €3.4 million to 27 seafood processing companies under the seafood capital investment scheme towards a total investment of €19.4 million.

At BIM, we share the collective vision for Ireland to become the international leader in high-value, differentiated seafood products that satisfy growing domestic and international demand for healthy, safe and responsibly and sustainably sourced seafood. There was never a more opportune time in which to drive that agenda forward. At BIM, the State has a dedicated and talented workforce with a high level of technical expertise that continues to deliver specialist and vital supports to the fisheries sector. We have a clearly defined and integrated strategy built on the solid foundation of the four pillars. At Government and Department level, we have the policy support. With the EMFF, through the European Commission, we have the resources. The market opportunity is there. The vision is articulated. The plan is agreed and the budget is secured. We must now continue to work diligently to deliver on our promise for the benefit of the sector.