Cuan Beo recently hosted its 2024 AGM in Ballinderreen Community Centre. Thank you to everyone in attendance and for continuing to offer your valuable insights to Cuan Beo’s mission. Here’s a summary of the meeting’s discussions and outcomes:

  • Cuan Beo has continued to contribute meaningful impacts in the Catchment 29 area. Diarmuid Kelly, chairperson of Cuan Beo, welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked them for their ongoing engagement. He highlighted Cuan Beo’s progress, including the development of a digital twin of Galway Bay, strong stakeholder linkages, and ongoing discussions on biodiversity monitoring and credits. Despite ongoing water quality issues, Cuan Beo can now quickly identify and address pollution events. He thanked the outgoing committee, education committee, and state agencies for their hard work and support. Kelly also expressed gratitude to Cuan Beo’s funders, including the Heritage Council, the Marine Institute/EMFAF, and LAWPRO, and welcomed Michael Officer as the new programme manager.
  • We’re delighted to have been awarded National Heritage Council funding through the “Heritage Organisations Support Fund 2024”. With this funding we’ve welcomed Michael Officer as Cuan Beo’s first Programme Manager. We’re delighted for Michael to join the team and are excited to see the accelerated roll out of our key programs focused on marine restoration, education, and outreach.
  • Dr Ollie Tully presented the Marine Institute’s ongoing work in oyster restoration. A review of oyster restoration in Galway Bay was recently published by the MI. While juvenile numbers are healthy with high recruitment, later stages toward commercial sizes remain in a critical situation with low numbers and possibly high mortalities.
  • Cuan Beo has been busy pushing to influence and inform policy with community and political engagement. Attendance at the University of Galway Nuts & Bolts conference led to discussions with the Dept of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage about the national roll out of oyster restoration as nature-based solutions to address biodiversity loss and climate change. Cuan Beo representatives also presented at the EU Mission Ocean and annual LAWPRO conferences in Cork and Dublin respectively in 2023. Cuan Beo is achieving good traction with our various stakeholders and a renewed focus seems to be on community-level actions.
  • Cuan Beo’s plan for 2024/25 reflects our ambition to continue expanding Cuan Beo’s impact. We are actively running the following projects:

    • And of course, continued policy and political engagement and exploring available funding streams.
  • Lastly, Cuan Beo’s 2024/25 committee were elected!