The fate of a proposed €3.5m salmon farming operation in Bantry Bay will not be known until the summer of 2019 at the earliest, as officials this week deferred consideration of the licence application.

Donegal-based firm Braden Farad Teo, which trades as Marine Harvest Ireland (MHI), is behind the planned salmon farm on a site at Shot Head.

The company first submitted it plans to the Department of Agriculture in 2011 and was granted a licence by the minister to press ahead with the proposed development in 2015. However, the application was subsequently appealed to the Aquaculture Licenses Appeals Boards (ALAB).

Having indicated it would reach a decision by October 2018, ALAB is deferring its judgment until June 2019.

An incensed MHI points out that the Bantry Bay farm operation would be smaller than the firm’s existing operation at Clare Island, off the Mayo coast.

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It adds that the Bantry Bay project would create eight full-time jobs. MHI also says that it would commission a marine vessel with a local shipbuilder to service the Shot Head site.

Stiff Opposition

The project has faced stiff opposition from locals since MHI first announced it in 2011.

Save Bantry Bay, a group comprising local residents, objects to the development over concerns that sea lice from the farmed salmon will decimate wild salmon spawning in the bay, as well as affect wild trout. Two other salmon farms currently operate in Bantry Bay, one owned by MHI.

Friends of the Irish Environment also lodged an appeal against MHI’s salmon farm proposal three years ago.

Responding to the latest deferral in the licence application process, MHI said that it wanted to “place on record its disappointment that a final decision still hasn’t been reached on an application which the company originally applied for in 2011”.

MHI’s statement continues: “Seven years later, we are told that the decision won’t be taken until the middle of next year at the earliest. It sends out a very negative message to the Irish aquaculture sector and doesn’t provide any of the certainty which is necessary for those seeking to invest and create employment in the industry.

“As it stands, ALAB is quite obviously under-resourced. It needs to be given adequate resources to do its job, especially with the minister putting further work its way by making promises about clearing the backlog of licence applications and committing to the issuance of 300 shellfish licences both this year and next.”

MHI, represented by PR agency Keatings, is a subsidiary of the Marine Harvest ASA, headquartered in Norway. It has operated in Ireland for 39 years and employs around 300 people between its salmon farms and hatcheries in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Cork and Kerry.

The company produces organic salmon under the brand ‘The Irish Organic Salmon Co’. MHI said that it has €22m earmarked for investment in Irish sites, which would create 250 jobs in rural, coastal locations.

“Ireland’s failure to meet aquaculture targets set out in various government strategy documents will result in lost income of €1.3bn by 2020 if no tangible, progressive action is taken by the department,” the company stated.