Come and see me - Village Magazine

VILLAGEApril/May 

HILE the current Taoiseach is

usually clearer than his dubi-

ous predecessor, Bertie Ahern,

his comments to the Business Leaders

of America on his recent St Patrick’s Day

visit to Washington DC included praise for

something called our “innovation-friendly

eco-system”. In a funny way it invoked the

days when Mr Ahern ventilated about the

excessive inﬂuence of “swans and snails”

in the national conversation, and Martin

Cullen, as Minister for the Environment,

mixed up global warming and ozone

depletion.

Exactly how an Irish eco-system can be

more friendly to innovations than any other

country’s eco-system is diﬃcult to imagine.

However there is no doubt that whatever he

meant, it’s working. And that is what An

Taoiseach – a practical man and doughty

friend to business – surely wants.

Forbes Magazine’s award of the Number

one spot in its annual list of ‘Best Countries

for Doing Business’ quoted a report released

last October from the American Chamber of

Commerce Ireland which showed “US ﬁrms

invested $. billion in Ireland between

 and . That represented a greater

total than had been invested in the previous

 years combined”. Feel the breadth.

It’s diﬃcult to know how much ‘inward

foreign investment’ has been facilitated by

Kenny’s alluring invitations to “come and

see me”, but one business leader who jetted

in at the end of January for ‘face time’ cer-

tainly went away smiling.

The lucky interlocutor was Alf-Helge

Aarskog (don’t ask), CEO of Marine Harvest,

the largest producer of farmed salmon in the

world. The group operates in  countries

and employs more than , people with

€ billion-plus in sales last year, and €

million in proﬁt.

A written parliamentary question from

ENVIRONMENT FISH-FARMS

Come and see me

Is it possible Enda

Kenny, indulger

of delinquent ﬁsh

farmers, doesn’t even

know what an eco-

system is? By Tony

Lowes

I can tell you that Ireland

is the perfect location for

overseas entrepreneurs.

It is ideal for anyone

here considering an

innovative start-up.

We have wide-ranging

supports and an

innovation-friendly eco-

system. And if you are or

might be, come and see

me.

Enda Kenny

– Business Leaders

of America Lunch

Washington DC

13 March 2014

“

April/May VILLAGE

independent Deputy Noel Grealish to

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney

about this ‘oﬀ-radar meeting’ suggested

that it “would not have come to light had

Mr Aarskog not spoken of it elsewhere”. “It

must be assumed these take place on a range

of subjects”, the Deputy wrote, “without

the knowledge of other, equally legitimate,

interests”.

Not only was Alf-Helge Aarskog greeted

by the Taoiseach, but he was ﬂanked by

Minister Coveney, the Minister of State

for the Gaeltacht Dinny McGinley, Donegal

Deputy Joe McHugh and oﬃcials from

the Department of the Taoiseach and

Agriculture. The best of Irish welcomes to

be sure.

The meeting, according to Simon

Coveney’s reply, was “held at the request of

the company to discuss licensing and indus-

try development issues associated with the

company’s operations in Ireland”. Coveney

was quick to reassure Grealish, who has

been vocal in his support of groups opposing

the project to double the country’s produc-

tion in one salmon farm in Galway Bay that

the meeting did not address pending licence

applications. “There is always a strict sep-

aration between my Ministerial role as

decision maker in respect of aquaculture

licence applications and my Ministerial duty

to promote the sustainable development of

the industry. This separation of duties is

always strictly observed”, Coveney said.

In fact,  of  salmon farms operating

have no current licence to do so. The hold-up

on all aquaculture licence applications,

according to the Irish Farmers Association

(IFA) (which enthusiastically support ﬁsh

farming as part of their remit – the key is

in the word ‘farming’) is costing the indus-

try € million a year. In fact, based on last

year’s returns from Marine Harvest, it may

be saving them more than € million a year.

That is the sum that Marine Harvest lost in

, due to ‘biological events’ – disease,

parasites, and attacks from jellyﬁsh on the

trapped salmon, leading to a halt in new

production this winter, in order to ‘grow

the ﬁsh’.

Industry experts outside Ireland suggest

that Coveney’s dream for Ireland to produce

farmed salmon at the level of Scotland, is

misplaced. They suggest that the bays are

too shallow and too exposed and that the

waters are now too warm to control disease

and parasites.

‘Biological events’ sound suspiciously

close to ‘eco-systems’. These systems are

supposed to be protected under European

law by Environmental Impact Assessments

before development commences, and it is the

lack of these that has led to  of Ireland’s 

salmon farms now operating unlicensed.

Under a  European Court judg-

ment against Ireland, each operation must

be assessed before licences can be issued

or renewed. And for this to be done, base-

line surveys of the locations, most of them

protected by European designations, must

ﬁrst be completed. These rely on a National

Parks and Wildlife Service that has been

starved of funds for years in a largely suc-

cessful attempt to prevent it from raising

objections to what might damage our ‘inno-

vation-friendly eco-system’.

Irish licences, good for  years, began

to be issued without any of the required

EIAs after the  Fisheries Amendment

Act was brought into place. Hence the ECJ

Judgment against Ireland. And hence the

present situation.

Laura Burke, the head of the EPA, high-

lighted the fundamental issue in an

interview in Eolas after she was appointed to

her new role. Not only can poor implemen-

tation of EU law harm the environment and

human health, she said, “it generates regu-

latory uncertainty for industry and it puts

in question the level playing ﬁeld”.

In fact, unlicensed operations may not

be given state aid, do not meet the require-

ments of lending institutions for funding

– and cannot be certiﬁed as organic.

To circumvent the European Commission,

an amendment was brought into Irish legisla-

tion in  to allow operators to continue,

provided they kept to their conditions and

had a valid application for renewal in place.

But nothing in this ‘continuity mechanism’

allowed the transfer of the licence – which

now no longer exists legally – to another

operator. None of the four farms where oﬃ-

cial records indicate Marine Harvest as the

‘operator’ have valid licences.

This is how Marine Harvest has been

expanding, much to the consternation of

coastal residents, who have seen salmon

farms reappear with no assessment, no pub-

lic notice and no right for them to object.

Further insult is added to this injury to

the ecosystem through the Minister ignor-

ing the legislative requirement to rescind

licences where there has been abandon-

ment for two years or more. In the case of

Inver Bay in Donegal the abandonment had

extended for eight years and yet the Minister

waived the requirement after special plead-

ings by the operators who argued that they

had been maintaining the anchors and

cleaning the anchor ropes of algae at least

once a year.

Legally, the physical cages, their moor-

ing, and their maintenance are governed

under separate licences issued to the oper-

ators under the Foreshore Acts, not the

Aquaculture legislation. To suggest that

cleaning the anchor lines constituted the

cultivation of ﬁsh is laughable.

The same Inver Bay company that argued

it had not abandoned the cultivation of ﬁsh,

however, also sought to have the €,

in licence-fee arrears waived – on the

grounds that it was producing no ﬁsh dur-

ing the period and so should not have to pay

a licence fee. According to an unpublished

Salmon Watch Ireland report,

more than € million has been

paid out to salmon farms that

have gone bust since the indus-

try started.

It is not only residents who are

objecting. The arrival of Marine

Harvest in Inver Bay in 

brought forth objections from

an active licence-holder, worried

that the agreed fallowing period

and management protocols long

established in the Bay would not

apply to the international giant.

The new operator threatened bio-

security: the boats that serviced

the new operations could bring

diseases in from other Marine

Harvest sites along the coast. All

of this would h ave been addr esse d

publicly if Marine Harvest had

been required to go through the

listening procedure.

And if anything does go wrong, the

global company cannot easily be made

accountable.

The recent resumption of ﬁsh farming

in Kilkieran Bay in Connemara was done

through the transfer of an expired licence to

a company set up by Údaras na Gaeltachta,

which holds the controlling interest, directly

and through holdings in other companies.

It, in turn, has allowed Marine Harvest to

operate on their behalf.

In fact, Alf-Helge Aarskog and Marine

Harvest have no legal presence here in

Ireland, operating instead through a series

of companies that they have taken over

which ‘trade as’ Marine Harvest.

If anything should go wrong with the

‘innovation friendly ecosystem’ such as a

proliferation of sea lice that extinguished

local populations of native salmon; disease,

such as the amoebic gill disease that devas-

tated the Clare Island ‘organic’ salmon farm

last year; the escape of , salmon

between  and ; or the recent

escapes in last winter’s storms into Bantry

Bay, Alf-Helge Aarskog would still be smil-

ing. The perfect location indeed. •

Marine

Harvest met

the Taoiseach,

Minister

Coveney, the

Minister of

State for the

Gaeltacht,

Donegal Deputy

Joe McHugh

and oﬃcials.

“oﬀ radar”

“