Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the CEO of BIM and her colleagues. The importance of the seafood sector and indeed the aquaculture sector cannot be emphasised strongly enough. I live near the fishing village of Cromane in County Kerry. Fishing for wild salmon was the norm once upon a time. They have moved on to mussels. We used to export mussels to France, Holland, etc. They were the third-largest in Ireland at one stage. Today it is predominantly oysters. It has been very successful and it is great to see young families earning a good living, being able to afford to build or buy a house and not having to emigrate, obviously. We have many very successful seafood businesses in Kerry. We have Quinlan's in Cahersiveen down at Reenard Point. There is Daly's in Cahersiveen, Browne's in Dingle, Ó Cathain Iasc Teoranta - Dingle Seafood, Star Seafood in Kenmare and Glenbeigh Shellfish in my parish, which I had better not forget. It is great to see these companies that started off small develop and be supported. It is hugely important and we must support and invest in the industry going forward.

Later I will raise the issue of the huge delays in the processing of aquaculture licences. These are causing problems. These companies want to develop and they cannot. It is costing jobs and that is the bottom line. The officials may have nothing to say on this but I will pose the question as it is close to my heart. Do they have any views on pair trawling? Do they think it may be damaging the industry?