Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
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1033. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on a matter (details supplied) regarding Covid-19 payments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11099/21]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My Department's European Maritime and Fisheries Fund Programme 2014-2020 provides financial supports for the sustainable development of our seafood sector. Supports to aquaculture producers under the EMFF Programme, including for capital investment, innovation, professional advisory services and organic certification have continued to be available throughout the Pandemic and demand from producers for these grants has remained strong.

On 22nd October 2020, I announced a COVID-19 Aquaculture Support Scheme under the EMFF Programme, to be administered by BIM, and designed to compensate oyster and rope mussel producers for the reduction in sales and production in 2020, compared to 2019, arising from the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Scheme closed in November with 181 aquaculture enterprises applying. Payments ranged from €6,800 to €16,300 for oyster producers and from €1,300 to €9,000 for rope mussel producers. Details of the status of these applications are set out in the below table:

The terms and conditions of the Scheme provided that it was available only to those producers who were compliant with certain legal obligations that apply to all aquaculture producers, namely compliance with their aquaculture and foreshore licences and with the requirement in law to submit economic data on their operations to Bord Iascaigh Mhara through an annual Aquaculture Production and Employment Survey. The Scheme required that applicants must have complied with the economic data requirements for each of the three previous years, unless they were a recent entrant to the sector who would not have been in production for those three years.

As these are mandatory eligibility conditions of the Scheme and relate to obligations in law on aquaculture producers, BIM cannot approve for funding any applications that do not meet these requirements.