High Court Ruling - A good day for Atlantic salmon

The long running high court case against the Aquaculture Licence Appeals Board and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine received judgement on Friday 12th July, and we were successful in having the decision to issue a salmon farm licence at Shot Head in Bantry Bay quashed and sent back to ALAB and DAFM for re-decision effectively  forcing MOWI to start the entire process of applying for a licence again which will be subject to our full consideration and renewed objection on numerous environmental grounds.

Briefly put, the Aquaculture Licence will be quashed for inadequate:
i. AA Screening of the risk of effects of seal scarers on seals of the SAC.
ii. EIA as to the risks of escape of salmon from the fish farm. This finding relates to necessity of re-consideration of bespeaking the DAFM reports on the 2014 farmed salmon escape in Bantry Bay, and comprehensiveness of the EIA as it related to the specification and structural integrity of the cage
installation.
iii. reasons for the conclusion that the proposed fish farm will not lead to a breach of WFD limits as to Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen – specifically, reasons for reliance on RPS’s “typical” data in reaching that conclusion.

In addition, I will declare that ALAB delayed unreasonably as to AA Screening from the making of the Appeals in October 2015 to embarking on AA Screening after the Oral Hearing Report of November 2017. I will grant no further relief on that account.

The Foreshore Licence will be quashed as

• contingent on the quashed Aquaculture Licence, Ministerial regard to which was a statutory requirement
of granting the Foreshore Licence.
• the Minister erred, in breach of s.82 of the 1997 Act, in granting the Foreshore Licence in 2022, in having
regard to his Aquaculture Licence decision of 2015 rather than to ALAB’s impugned Aquaculture Licence
determination of 29th June 2021.

The full decision is at following link. Court Judgement