Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Aquaculture Licensing Process: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

3:30 pm

Dr. Cecil Beamish:

I can certainly look at it. We have been working actively on some of these, including the resourcing of ALAB. ALAB has been given additional resources since this. There is a request for a service level agreement. There are legal issues about that because it is an independent body. Putting a burden on it for delivery on operational independent legal decisions does not sit with the primary legislation. However, we are looking at drafting a governance agreement with ALAB if we can within legal advice. That has been ongoing. It is dynamic and probably anything we might give the committee would probably be out of date shortly after it is given to the committee because it is all changing.