Concern voiced about seaweed harvesting rights along Mayo coast

CONCERN for the rights of people to harvest seaweed along the Mayo coast has been raised at council level.

A company is understood to be putting in an application to buy all the rights to foreshore licences to cut seaweed, Louisburgh-based Councillor Chris Maxwell revealed at a Westport-Belmullet Municipal District meeting.

It would affect his area and all the way down to north Mayo, he told the meeting in Belmullet.

This was a tradition all along the coast and now someone was 'coming in to try and take away their right', he has been told.

He knew people who had spent their lives at this and reared their families cutting seaweed and now this company was trying to disrupt their way of life.

This was going to be another serious issue in rural Ireland, he stated.

Councillor Johnny O'Malley elaborated how the company in question wanted to buy the rights all the way from Donegal down to Clare.

They wanted to put in barges and bring the seaweed out to them and then down to a plant in the south of the country.

This was tried before, he added, but it wasn't successful.

“I know people who paid off their mortgage cutting seaweed,” he stated. “A lot of people will be impacted if this happens.

"I would be against any company going in and buying the rights to the shoreline from Donegal to Clare.”