Aquaculture and Seafood Ireland spoke to Marine Minister Charlie McConalogue about the future of Ireland’s seafood industry Aquaculture and Seafood Ireland spoke to Marine Minister Charlie McConalogue about the future of Ireland’s seafood industry.
Why has Ireland’s aquaculture industry consistently failed to realise its full potential in production and employment? We do have to work very hard at developing the potential of our aquaculture sector. I know there has been lots of frustration within the industry in recent years at its failure to develop all its potential, and I understand that.
good licensing framework and infrastructure in place. But, obviously, the situation of the last number of years where there have been so many challenges around renewing licences for existing sites has been an impediment to that. In fairness, though, a lot of work has been done related to addressing those, especially in the shellfish sector. There is an increased focus now on trying to address the licensing backlog in finfish.
Aquaculture is an exciting sector, and, as Minister, I will work hard to try to develop it. There has been a lot of challenges in recent years with delays in aquaculture licensing. Still, there has been a lot of progress about that recently.
The licensing backlog has not only frustrated producers but has also hindered development and discouraged investment. So, what progress is being made?
I now want to see that progress accelerated and those remaining licensing issues dealt with and a
A lot of effort, time and resources have been used to deal with the backlog in shellfish licensing backlog.
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Twelve hundred of those licences have been issued now, which has taken up a lot of the resources allocated to it. Thankfully, it is now in a much more positive space. The focus will now be on putting the time and effort into dealing with licensing in the finfish sector. Thirty-seven marine finfish licence applications are currently on hand. However, at the request of the marine finfish farming sector, I recently extended the timeline for applicants to submit their environmental impact assessments by the end of June. No aquaculture licence can be determined without an environmental impact assessment on hand and completed. The applicants themselves requested that additional time, and I hope that it will be the final extension. Eleven of those thirty-seven are currently being assessed. The previously dedicated resources to the shellfish
sector are now focusing very much on the finfish sector. The critical task is to resolve and determine those.
An aquaculture licence in Ireland is for ten years. However, a Belgian mussel producer recently received a twenty-year licence. Would you consider extending the licence period to attract investment? There are significant differences between the Belgian model and our own. For example, most of our applications tend to be in bays that would have designations, whereas the Belgian model would be different. Twenty years is a long, long time. Indeed, a ten-
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