Ms Sinéad McSherry:

I thank the Deputy. The Deputy first mentioned the bottom-grown mussel seed fishery, which is managed on an all-Ireland basis. There is a group that includes stakeholders, ourselves, the Marine Institute and that is chaired by BIM. It looks at the needs of that particular fishery. For the past two years, the scientific advice has suggested there is not sufficient biomass to harvest seed and that is a real difficulty, but the issue is it is a naturally-occurring seed and we need the conditions to be correct and we need to increase that. I am not briefed on this so the Deputy should bear with me, but I understand they are sourcing seed from Wales in particular. Again, conditions there and environmental conditions have been good and that has facilitated the sourcing of seed from there. I appreciate the fact the Irish mussel seed fishery has not been activated in two years because of the biological conditions is a concern, but we must manage it within the environmental guidelines that are there and when the biomass is not there, we cannot withdraw the seed.

The Deputy referred to an oyster operator. Naturally, if he wishes to correspond with us directly on that it is fine and we can do that.

On the submission from the IFA aquaculture section and the request for €5 million, the IFA has spoken with the team in the Department. We have tried to work and ask BIM to get some insights, information and data to try to assess this and look at what is possible and BIM is working on that. It is probably primarily Ms Brennan who has been dealing with that and if she wants to add something she can, but it is an item that is on BIM's agenda to try to get sufficient data to look at what can be done. The IFA has put a number on it, but in order for us to be able to look and secure some funding we need to have the data from BIM. On aquaculture development, there is a scheme there for aquaculture investment. I agree with the Deputy there is huge potential within the shellfish sector. The sector is predominantly maybe artisanal SMEs and it is trying to scale up with that. That is part of the strategic plan for aquaculture, but it is about doing that in an environmentally-sound manner. Those are working their way through, but given the size of the enterprises, it is about trying to bring them with us in terms of innovation and trying to scale up.

I will defer to Ms O'Sullivan on the inshore north west herring and finish by saying that unfortunately, any review of policy is a matter for the Minister, but we have noted it from today.