Conor D McGuinness: Dublin shellfish industry at risk

I have a number of questions and comments I'm going to make at this juncture before we begin the second round of questions and answers. And as you said, the industry in Dublin is facing an existential crisis if what happened the last two years happens again the first week in August, or indeed any week this summer. I think from having spoken with you and some of your colleagues, that will mark the end of the industry. It will be very, very difficult to claw back operations and to continue trading. I think that message has been heard within the department by the Minister, but I think it needs to be heard a lot louder now because to have an industry that provides the level of employment, the multiplier effect of the local economy, go to the wall effectively, would be deeply, deeply regrettable. Especially given, not only its importance, but the investment that the state has made in it, particularly through the Ros na Gaeltacht and the investment that all of you who are in it have made personally and financially over many, many years. So that's the first thing that needs to be said. The issue with the mortality events is really difficult to tie down. I was at that meeting with Minister Dooley and the industry back in September last year, I believe, and I know that a group has put together with the various agencies operating in this space to look into it, but still there's no, despite all the evidence, despite all the testing, despite all the analysis, all the ability that the state has, still hasn't been able to get to the bottom of it. And that's really, really worrying. It poses so many questions. And as you said, Touchwood doesn't happen this year. We'll all breathe a sigh of relief, but we'll still be left wondering, well, what caused it and will it happen next year? Will it happen the year after? How safe are we? And that's a really tough place to be as business people. You don't need me to tell you. Tough to invest in a business when you're dealing with that uncertainty. And tough, I imagine, for buyers to source product when they might be grappling with that as well. But have there been any interim results from any of that study? Has the communication from the department, has there been any, have you been kept up to date, I suppose, with the nature of the investigation, with any preliminary results, with any kind of avenues of investigation? We get some of the E. coli results back from BIM. We do have one stream that is a big issue, but the council have met with BIM and are looking at that as well. Any of the others, we haven't got anything back yet, but the Marine Institute, the Fish Health Unit are in constant communication with us, which is good, and explaining what testing they are doing and everything like that. So, yeah, there isn't a full set of results there just yet. It might be worth mentioning as well that the Marine Institute have a bursar in the area, and she's giving a lot of assistance practically on the ground with the testing, and is acting, she's living in the parish, so she's acting as a kind of a permanent link to the Marine Institute. And if I could just refer back slightly to Deputy Whitmore's point earlier, within the testing that's being done, the BIM officer is testing the output at the mouth of all the different rivers for E. coli and so on. And so we are very much not discounting that on a local basis. The other little point maybe to bring up that kind of touches on that as well is that, you know, as with many bays, there's a norovirus issue there as well during the winter months. And, you know, that's primarily from human sources. There can be some from agriculture as well, but the testing establishes the source. And so I'm sorry now if I'm going a little bit off your topic, Connor, but I just thought it important to mention that we are actually taking the whole river basin and bay into account in our testing. And that's as it should be in terms of investigating it, and still with the net cast fairly wide, you know, it's disappointing and it's very worrying that still none the wiser as to what exactly is causing this. Something that we haven't and hasn't been mentioned in this meeting yet, and it's always, we see it in this committee in particular, it's always kind of an awkward moment because we're dealing with fishermen, we're dealing with people who live in the coast and they don't want to talk about grants necessarily, they don't want to talk about compensation or payments or something. You're trying to keep an industry alive here through no fault of your own. You're dealing with a situation that is really hampering your business. In so many other sectors, we would see government almost land in uninvited and say, well, look, here's how we're going to look after you to tidy over, to keep employment, to keep your heads above water. It is something that I think we'd like to hear your opinions, both IFA and Bord Lorig, to see what exactly is, what exactly would help for your businesses. So I might go to Finian first and then back to you, Tina. Thanks, Chairman. Yeah, I was just, Renita was answering my questions on support, really, I suppose. It occurred to me that in our submission to the Food Vision Seafood Task Force that we, because if you don't have a license, you're aware that we're not eligible for grant aid. If you're in renewal. If you're in renewal, sorry, if you're in renewal, we're not eligible for grant aid under the Sustainable Agriculture Grant Scheme. So that's through no fault of the shellfish producer or any of the aquaculture producers. We can't get grant aid if you're in renewal. And you know the story around that. We're in renewal for years and years and that type of thing. So what we suggested to the task force is that Irish Inc. take up the full complement of the grant of 50 percent. I think 25 percent of that can be recovered from Europe. But in this particular case, as I say, we're ineligible at European level because of not having a current license type of thing. So you could support us in that, that basically Irish Inc. kind of take up the full complement of the 50 percent grant in the Sustainable Agriculture Scheme, which we believe is to be launched in July. And the problem with it being launched is because of eligibility, you know, there's so many of our members kind of are not eligible for grant aid. We think over half the total licensees. And, you know, anything helps. Like if people have projects and still have the faith in the industry going forward, despite all the knockbacks, and if they want to do something with the machinery or something, you know, it would be good that they could actually do that and be prepared for when the sunny days come again type of thing. So you could support us in that, in chasing down the 50 percent grant aid from Irish Inc. Thank you. In terms of Dublin, Ireland, the immediacy of the situation? OK, well, there are a number of issues. Of course, any kind of direct assistance would be more than welcome, particularly maybe in respect of restocking or something like that. But I would also like to point out that, you know, again, it comes back to the grants. There doesn't seem to be the IIM need to open the grant scheme for the industry. Now, that boat has sailed for us because half of our licenses ran out last year and the other half are due to run out within about a week or so. The sustainable aquaculture scheme seems to only open for a very limited number of months every year. And like I say, that ship has sailed for us. Coming back to the assistance on the mortalities itself, we seem to be lacking any kind of a structure or a scheme into which a situation like this can land. So if you're a farmer and a cow gets TB or whatever, I'm not terribly well up on this, but, you know, the state is telling you, you must cull this animal and there's a compensation. That's fair enough. I've no issue at all with that. But because these seemed to die a somewhat natural death, again, not in my opinion, but, you know, there's not a scheme there apparently that we can fit into. And this has been a matter that has been raised over a long number of years. I've been on and off the IFA Aquaculture Committee for a long, long time. There was an issue actually in Donegal several years ago where they had massive losses in stock. And again, there wasn't a mechanism through which those oyster farmers could be helped. So I think, yes, we would love to get any money we can get, any help we can get. But there's a structural issue there too. Okay. Thank you for that Deputy.