Ms Tara McCarthy:

Yes, we would be delighted to share it with the committee.

I am not personally aware of onshore tests going on. The large offshore projects have stopped. On 8 December, a national aquaculture strategy was launched by the Department which put the maximum size of any fish farm in Ireland at 5,000 tonnes. The original application for the Galway farm was for 15,000 tonnes. BIM withdrew its application, based on that recommendation of the national aquaculture plan. We have no intention of resubmitting any plan of that size.

I challenge Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh's assumption that the industry is dying on its feet. There are industry challenges but there are significant opportunities for this industry as well. What we are looking to do is create the supports we give in a channelled way to help where the challenges lie. We put a lot of thought into the spaces in which we should be operating. It is one of the most fantastic and challenging aspects of being an agency established since 1952. It has probably done a bit of everything over that period. Focus is the key skill which we have to maintain.

Over the past year, focus has been the absolute priority in our organisation. We want to be the best at doing the four key actions we outlined today. We want to be the best at providing a talent stream to this industry. There is a war for talent and if we cannot attract talent, we believe we will lose that war and then we will be dying on our feet. We are looking to create a skills roadmap. A tender for creating that roadmap for the industry will be issued over the next ten days.

We will be looking at the skills and the parity of esteem, a point raised earlier, to attract people into the industry. If someone comes into the industry, how transferable are their skills? How do we identify the future leaders of our industry? What skills can we provide them with and how do we train people to be businessmen and businesswomen of our industry, not just driving a boat? That is the key change. This industry will not die on its feet if it has the best people working in it.

Clearly, sustainability has to be part of the DNA of our industry. There is a significant amount of work being done in that space. The industry is very poor at articulating just how much it is doing in this regard, however. We need to help and design methods of doing that.

Like I mentioned earlier, there needs to be a culture of innovation. If we think we can do the same things we did in 1952, we will die on our feet. How does one build the culture of innovation into our industry to allow it to manage within the constraints in which it must operate? We are not challenged with implementing all of the controls. However, we would fundamentally support the idea that the industry has to be controlled. It has to work within a sustainable infrastructure because that allows us to have a marketable product, in which, at the end, our customers can have faith and for which they can pay a premium price.