Vol. 557 No. 4
292 Mr. Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources if he will consider promoting or funding a baseline data survey of coastal and marine ecosystems here; and if he will consider making testing facilities available to peripheral communities in view of the fact that mapping and monitoring of the marine environment would greatly open up potential for small communities to establish a farm in a peripheral area. [22584/02]
Specialist advice relating on the appropriate siting of aquaculture activity is already made available, through BIM and the Marine Institute, to interested parties in coastal and peripheral communities. Information and data gathered by the Marine Institute in the course of mapping and profiling Ireland's extensive coastal and marine offshore resource is also made publicly available.
The current bank of knowledge is expected to be significantly supplemented through three initiatives undertaken by or on behalf of the Marine Institute, namely: a study on special areas of conservation, SACs, in selected bays on behalf of Dúchas; a feasibility study for a largescale inshore mapping study; and a survey by the Geological Survey of Ireland, GSI, of the offshore seabed. These studies are expected to assist, inter alia, in the identification of areas in which aquaculture activities may be undertaken sustainably. The findings of the first two studies are expected to be available in March 2003. The GSI survey will be undertaken over the period 2003-06.
