An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17
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Manus Boyle (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

Today I want to talk about seaweed. I am calling on the Department to exercise thought, close examination and foresight when addressing applications from companies from other countries that set up so as to appear to be from Ireland and then harvest large quantities of wrack along large sections of the west coast of Ireland. Seaweed forests are living infrastructure. They protect the shoreline and homes from coastal erosion, provide necessary grounds for fish and marine species and support biodiversity above and below the waterline. Removing wrack at industrial scale risks disabling this fragile system. We have all witnessed over many years how overfishing in Ireland's exclusive economic zone, EEZ, by other countries has contributed to massive decline in the Irish fishing industry and we sadly see that today.
I urge the Minister to have a good look at this. We must protect the small operators who have built their business on a respectfully measured approach to harvesting seaweed down through the years. We really need to get the Minister in here to have a proper look at this, because we have foreign multinationals coming in here. At the end of the day, our own people have been doing it for years, and they need to be consulted on this.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-17