Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth (HOOW), Ireland’s integrated marine plan, published in 2012 set out the Government’s Vision, high-level Goals and integrated actions across a range of areas such as policy, governance, business and research & innovation to enable Ireland’s marine potential to be achieved. As HOOW was not a core operational plan or strategic statement of any one Department, implementation of the actions was overseen by the Inter-Departmental Marine Coordination Group (MCG) to supervise cross-government delivery and implementation of the Plan. An important aspect of the implementation of the Plan was the delivery within the medium term fiscal framework and budgetary targets adopted by the Government.
HOOW identified 39 cross-Departmental actions and assigned responsibility and a timeline for implementation in respect of each Action. Annual reviews of Progress were published from 2014-2019 on WWW.ouroceanwealth.ie.
In relation to the BIM report; Focusing The Future and Maximizing The Value of the Irish Seafood Industry 2016, as this is a matter for BIM, I have referred the matter for direct response to BIM.
As the recommendations of ‘Steering a new course’ 2006 draw in a range of complex national funding programmes, fisheries policy and harbours issues, it will be necessary to defer the response in relation to this report, for written follow-up.