Economic data collection and reporting on the state of the marine sector in Ireland

This project is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's Beaufort Award.

There are two major strands to this project: (i) Collecting data to meet the requirement of publishing a bi-annual report on the state of the marine sector in Ireland; and (ii) Providing data for the research activity of the other various research projects in SEMRU funded under the Beaufort Award.

The bi-annual report will comprise the following

a.       The economic contribution of the main marine sectors in terms of economic measures such as output, employment and exports;

b.       Estimates of the economic importance of the marine related sectors and activities.

c.       Estimates of the employment levels in the marine sector

d.       Estimates of the regional distribution of the sector

e.       An evaluation of  non-marketed activities;

f.         A comparative performance of the marine sector and marine policy relative to agriculture and forestry in Ireland;

g.       A benchmarking of the Irish Marine sector against Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Canada;

h.       Ireland’s marine performance in the context of evolving EU policy in this area and discusses the potential impact of policy development; and

i.         Lessons which can learned to inform the development of marine research and innovation policy on an ongoing basis.

The data provided here will be mainly secondary data extracted from existing statistical and statutory agencies’ records and reports. In particular, the industry specific (NACE 3 digit) data collected by the Central Statistics Office, will be the focus of engagement to make a more refined reporting framework available in respect to Marine Sector activities. Any gaps remaining will be filled by the collection of primary data. This decision will be taken after consultation and negotiation with the CSO and other State Agencies. It is expected that the data collection within this project can be made available to a wider community through the participation of the CSO and its reciprocation on access to collected data, taking into consideration any confidentiality requirements of the CSO. This project will also consider the establishment of gaps in useful data which may be beyond the scope of the current project such as the profit margins of marine based businesses and make recommendations for future data collection efforts.

The data gathered in this project will directly the other Beaufort funded projects within the unit. The projects “The impact of regulation on the development of the marine industry in Ireland” and “Competitiveness and Innovation in the Marine Food Sector in Ireland” will to a large extent depend upon focused qualitative data collection activities by the researcher, drawing also upon sector-wide data collected in this project. The project “The economic and social impact of the marine sector in Ireland” will utilise the sectoral and regional distribution of production, inputs and employment data gathered here to identify the downstream and upstream impact of the sector in terms of it use of Irish versus imported inputs as well as the marine sector’s contribution as an input to other sectors such as food processing and tourism etc. Regional and sectoral employment levels will be used to quantify the impact of the marine sector on the local economy.