Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:07 pm on 11 July 2018.
At the European level, there has been strategic thinking on how to carry out that mapping, but there has been no co-ordinated plan for the UK—no plan for Wales. The process of gathering data has been ad hoc. It hasn’t been properly co-ordinated, and that must change. Of course, we have the resource that we need to do that work. We see it on the screen: the Prince Madog.
So what’s the problem? Well, the funding model for the vessel has been very effective in the past. It has enabled Bangor University to have such a vessel. It is run jointly by the university and P&O Maritime as joint owners. The university uses the vessel for teaching and research for 125 days a year, and P&O Maritime looks for charters for the rest of the time, to make the project viable and sustainable. It’s been an excellent example of partnership between the public and private sector, but—and this is the reason for this debate—there is no pledge that we will have this resource in place post 2021. That’s when the current agreement comes to an end. There’s been a significant decline in the market for P&O’s commercial services making use of that particular vessel, and this puts the partnership at risk. As things look at present, it appears unlikely that P&O will be able to renew that contract. So, we need an alternative solution. What I want to see happening is the elevation of the Prince Madog from being the Bangor University research vessel to the status of a national maritime research ship. And, quite simply, we need such a vessel.
Off the Anglesey coast at the moment, there is some very exciting work happening in developing a demonstration zone for electricity generation techniques using the tides, and what makes that zone attractive to energy companies is that the preparatory work has been done for them by Morlais. It is they who run the initiative, including all of the mapping work and providing the information required on the state of the sea bed and where they can place their equipment. If we are truly serious about taking full advantage of the currents flowing around Wales, to bring economic and environmental benefits for future generations, then we need to do that mapping work to show what exactly the opportunities are. And if we don’t do it, then other nations will do it.
I mentioned earlier the strategic work of the European Commission, let’s look at what’s happening with our closest European neighbour in the Republic of Ireland. They have two national research vessels already. The main vessel, the Celtic Explorer, is 65m long, commissioned in 2003. Earlier this year, the Government of the Republic of Ireland said that they intended to by a new research ship to replace another of their vessels, namely the Celtic Voyager. Ireland knows that they must have these resources in order for them to take full advantage of their marine resources. The ‘Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth’ report published back in 2012 proposes an ambitious strategy that shows just how seriously Ireland is taking these opportunities. I haven’t seen a price for the new vessel—the Celtic Explorer, just out of interest, cost some €23 million back in 2003.
With the Prince Madog, we have a vessel in place already and it’s there for Wales, but Bangor University can’t afford to run it alone. They need support. Not tens of millions of pounds in capital, but support all the same. And without that support, it’s not just Bangor, but Wales, that would lose this excellent resource. There’s no other university in Britain that owns such a ship. For a university, it’s a very expensive resource, but for a nation that needs to invest in its future, we are talking about relatively small sums of money. I will give you an example of how it could work, and retaining a private, commercial partner as part of the deal too. Bearing in mind that there are years of mapping work that needs to be done—and it needs to be done for the economic benefit of Wales—if the Welsh Government became a partner in the Prince Madog as a national maritime research vessel, investing in 50 days a year, shall we say, then that could be enough to save the vessel. And maybe that could just be the start—50 days, some £5,000 a day, £250,000 per annum. That’s all we’re talking about, possibly, for mapping work that has the potential, let’s be honest, to release and to open the way to billions of pounds worth of marine energy projects, as well as being a source of crucial information in the areas of conservation, tourism, leisure, fisheries and food production.
I would argue that it is a very cost-effective means of delivering the data that we need for the future and of providing the necessary scientific analysis, and, in looking at it as support for a world-class school of ocean sciences, then it’s also a means of maintaining and strengthening the foundations for marine research in its broader sense, which also, of course, would provide an economic boost for Wales. This vessel attracts the best students from across the world to Wales.
To summarise, therefore, the prosperity of, and investment in, the blue economy in Wales depends on our understanding of the seas around us. We are in a privileged position of having the ability to carry out this research and we are lucky that we have the Prince Madog already, but let’s not take it for granted. Having left the European Union, there will be more responsibilities placed upon us as regards the management of our natural resources, but, to do that management, we will need the kind of scientific evidence that we simply don’t have at the moment. Wales has the ability to lead the way in tidal technology, and the Government has targets for increasing offshore energy production over the next years. But we must make that investment in energy generation easy, and, to do that, we need data and we need mapping.
The EU’s ambition, as I said earlier, is to map all of its seas. Ireland, as I said, is investing in this area already. But, at the moment, Wales still has no such programme in place and the Prince Madog is the key to that.