Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will address the points that were raised. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for Deputy Mathews's few words, so I will not be able to address them. I would have to prepare myself to respond to the way Deputy Mathews spoke.

The Minister's Department owns, maintains and directly manages six fishery harbour centres. The network of harbours, located at Killybegs, Ros an Mhil , An Daingean, Castletownbere, Dunmore East and Howth, are a valuable and vital resource to the Irish fishing fleet. The fishery harbour centres provide state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure for the increasingly mobile and large scale Irish and EU fishing industries. The importance of these harbours and their facilities to the Irish seafood sector is best told through some of the recent figures. In 2014, a total of 251,000 tonnes of fish was landed into the six fishery harbour centres. This represents 72% of all fish landings into Ireland. The value of fish landed into the fishery harbour centres increased from €200 million in 2011 to €262 million in 2014.

The fishery harbour centres underpin the Government's strategy to further develop a modern offshore fishing fleet and a modern onshore processing industry. The volume of landings going through the centres is enabled by the infrastructure created and the services operated and managed by the fishery harbour centres. The fishery harbours and coastal infrastructure development programme run by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is key to ensuring the future viability of the fishing industry. In total, €38.9 million was spent under this programme between 2011 and 2014: €24.2 million on Department owned and managed marine infrastructure, including the six fishery harbour centres; €9.4 million on local authority owned harbours linked to the fishing and aquaculture industries; €5.3 million on the once-off storm damage programme for piers and harbours as part of the Government's response to the damage caused by the winter storms of late 2013 and early 2014. It is unfortunate that Deputy Ó Cuív did not wait to hear the figures. When he, as Minister, was investing in Galway he forgot about the rest of the country, specifically County Wexford where there was no investment by his Government in its large and small harbours.

In 2015, the Minister allocated €14.8 million for the repair and development of departmental owned marine infrastructure. The flagship project in 2015 is the dredging works at Dunmore East Fishery Harbour Centre, at a cost of €7 million. The Minister has also allocated a further €1.6 million to the 2015 local authority programme as part of the overall 2015 programme. This vital funding will be spent on 25 approved local authority projects with a wide geographical spread, 16 of which are harbour development requiring funding of €1.257 million and nine of which relate to marine leisure requiring funding of €360,000. The infrastructure supported will be of great benefit to many rural coastal and island communities. In addition, the Minister has allocated €1.4 million in 2015 to enable local authorities to complete storm damage projects approved in 2014, which were unfinished due to time and other constraints.

Aquaculture is a rapidly growing industry internationally with very rapid expansion opportunities identified over the coming decades to meet the ever growing seafood demand arising from population growth and increased consumption in Asia. Aquaculture internationally produced 67 million tonnes of farmed fish in 2012 and it is projected to increase to 85 million tonnes by 2022, a projected increase of 18 million tonnes. The national strategic aquaculture plan proposes to increase Irish aquaculture production by 45,000 tonnes across all species by 2023. These targets are ambitious in the context of the past performance of this industry nationally but when one looks at the projected global expansion which this industry will experience over the next seven years, the national proposals are modest.

It is important to allay concerns about the environmental sustainability of the industry. In the draft national strategic plan, the Minister has sought to identify all of the issues affecting both the growth potential and sustainability of the aquaculture industry and has proposed a suite of 24 tailored actions to boost sustainable growth, while allaying legitimate areas of concern. With these initiatives, we can get our aquaculture sector back on a path of sustainable growth and provide much needed jobs in our coastal communities. There is a wide consensus regarding the enormous potential of the seafood sector to grow sustainably in the years ahead. There are also many challenges to be addressed. Much investment will have to happen in the years ahead to equip Ireland's seafood processing industry increasingly to add value to commodity products.

I outlined the measures proposed for the aquaculture sector in the draft national strategic plan for sustainable aquaculture. These measures must be matched with investment to grow output after recent years of stalled production. Funding and investment must also be targeted in our fishing fleet and in landing sites to adjust to the discards ban under the Common Fisheries Policy. We must invest in the science that underpins our industry and meet increasing demands to ensure environmental sustainability.

A number of proposed schemes target investment to address issues which are of particular relevance to rural coastal and island communities including: €42 million in implementing the new Common Fisheries Policy, including measures for developing more selective fishing gear and supporting the new discards ban; a further €6 million to build on the good work that has been ongoing over recent months to revive and sustainably grow our inshore fisheries; €30 million to sustainably develop our aquaculture industry and implement a new national plan for aquaculture which the Minister will announce shortly; €12 million to grow the seafood-based economies of our coastal communities through community led fisheries local action groups; €41 million to grow markets for our seafood products, to develop our seafood processing industry and to develop new value-added products for those markets; and almost €10 million to support implementation of EU environmental law to help protect vulnerable habitats and species and to ensure that our seafood sector continues to

The Minister is opening the Our Ocean Wealth conference today in Cork to mark the progress being made in developing Ireland's blue economy. Our seafood sector has been an important contributor to that progress. I spoke about the value of our seafood exports - €540 million in 2014, up a staggering 70% on 2009. Part of that progress has been achieved through successful collaborations between industry, trade and Government, helping to develop important markets like China, South Korea and Egypt.

Last week the Taoiseach launched the Food Wise 2025 strategy which aims to increase food exports to €19 billion and to create 23,000 new jobs by 2025. Local roots global reach, is the key theme of Food Wise 2025 and perhaps this is most apt when we look at the roots of our seafood sector in local communities around the coastline and its rapidly increasing global reach. When we reflect on the progress in recent years, we can see that we are right to be ambitious for the future of our seafood sector. Although there are challenges ahead, our seafood sector can continue to grow and develop with the support of targeted funding and investment and will bring much needed additional jobs to our rural coastal and island communities.

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions to this very important debate and, in particular, Deputy Doyle and the members of the sub-committee for bringing this very important report to the House. I come from a rural community and I understand the importance of small fishing villages, whether in the constituencies of Deputies Pringle, Martin Ferris or Doyle. There is an onus on all of us to ensure that our fishing villages and the fishing industry are given the support they need.

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