Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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660. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 1971 of 11 September 2017, the status of plans to sell the harvesting rights of kelp disk seaweed to a company (details supplied); if this deal has already gone through; and the way in which it will affect the County Clare coastline. [6708/18]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The role of my Department in regard to seaweed harvesting is to regulate the activity in accordance with the Foreshore Act 1933. The Act provides that a licence may be granted to remove beach material, including seaweed. Any licence granted would be temporary in nature.  The Foreshore Act does not include any mechanism under which harvesting rights may be sold to any third party.

In my reply to the Deputy in September last I advised that the named company has applied for a licence to harvest wild seaweed. During the course of assessing this and a number of other similar applications, it became clear that certain rights to harvest seaweed exist.  My Department is in the process of ascertaining, with the assistance of the Attorney General, the legal interface and relationship between these traditional harvesting rights and the current applications. 

These applications, most of which are by companies, are effectively on hold until such time as my Department is in a position to bring clarity to the regulatory regime applying to the harvesting of wild seaweed.  At that point the applications on hand will come before me for determination. Work on this complex legal issue is continuing and I hope to have made substantial progress on the matter by April this year.