This article is from page 7 of the 2012-10-30 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 7 JPG
A NEW offshore organic fish farm planned for the Burren coast will generate almost € 15 million in wages for the people of North Clare and South Galway each year.
That is according to figures released last week by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), who say that the jobs created by the € 40 million development will be high paying, sustainable employment with pay “well above the average industrial wage”.
The new BIM figures put the figure for annual direct wages at € 14.7 million, should the twin fish farms be developed to capacity. This would equate, roughly, to the entire Single Farm Payment (SFP) paid to all the farmers in North Clare each year.
Speaking to The Clare People yesterday, Donal Maguire, Head of aquaculture development at BIM, said that spin-off incomes for the area could also run into the millions of euro.
“This fish is a perishable project so it has to be handled and dealt with in the local community. So there is a great business argument for processing the fish in the local area. So you get a massive spin-off employment near these big fish farms,” he said.
“We estimate this as about € 14.7 million in wages for the local community.
“That is in direct and indirect employment concerning the farm but then there is the wider circulation of money when we look at the money spent in local shops, and restaurants and petrol stations.
“These are full-time, year round jobs that will pay way more than the minimum wage. They will pay more than the average industrial wage, so these are good jobs. It will also create an extra hundred million more in exports for the country which we don’t already have.”
The BIM also confirmed that all money needed to get this projects off the ground would be payable from the operating company and not the state.
“Basically, we do all the heavy lifting in creating the means for this to happen; in getting the aquaculture license and the foreshore license, but all the major spend in actually getting the project physically off the ground comes from the operator,” continued Donal.
“It’s not money for nothing. IT is a big undertaking and requires a lot of effort from different aspects of the state to achieve it. Also, we have had to do a lot of design work to ensure that a farm of this size would not have a negative environmental impact.
“We’ve looked at this really closely and we are confident that this will not cause a huge impact.”