Mr. Francis O'Donnell:

Good morning Chairman, Deputies and Senators. I offer apologies on behalf of Mr. Sean O'Donoghue of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, KFO, and Ms Eileen O'Sullivan of the Irish South and West Fish Producers' Organisation, who cannot be present today. I am accompanied by Mr. Gavin Power and Mr. Ted Breslin of the KFO.

The Federation of Irish Fishermen welcomes the opportunity to present our views on the status and management requirements for the inshore fishery in Ireland. The federation comprises the Irish Fish Producers' Organisation, the KFO and the Irish South and West Fish Producers' Organisation. Collectively, we represent a number of segments, including pelagic, mixed demersal fisheries, brown crab, nephrops and inshore fisheries. We are acutely aware of the importance of inshore fisheries from a socioeconomic perspective. Sustainable management and regulation is the key to ensuring a healthy inshore fishery in Ireland. Sadly, this has been lacking to date, even though a number of blueprints have been published at the taxpayer's expense which clearly outlined a roadmap to effectively manage this fishery.

Ireland has a significant amount of autonomy when managing its inshore fisheries and is not constrained by total allowable catches TACs for most of the mollusc and crustacean species found in inshore waters. Inshore fisheries should be given the required support to expand sustainably to support coastal and island communities. This need has been recognised by the recent amendments to include islands and coastal communities by the European Parliament as part of the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. However, Ireland is seriously lacking in policy in this area.

It is estimated that more than 80% of Ireland's fishing fleet operates inside the 12-mile limit. The inshore sector, which concentrates in the main on crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops, whelk, razor, cockles and Atlantic salmon, carries out its activity within the six-mile limit. The last complete figures available for the economic potential of the inshore fishery in Ireland are for 2005. Those figures were published by BIM and the Marine Institute. Landings of wild-caught fish in the inshore fishery were worth approximately €30 million at that time. The inshore fleet is concentrated along the entire coastline of Ireland and supports around 3,000 fishers. The vessel sizes are small, with the fleet mainly composed of vessels under 15 m in length. There are approximately 2,100 vessels registered in the Irish fishing fleet, approximately 1,872 of which are less than 15 m in length. The latter is reflective of sectors such as aquaculture, polyvalent general, polyvalent potting and specific. The number of registered vessels has grown substantially since 2005. This has been driven to some extent by the scheme for the licensing of traditional pot fishing boats in the Irish Inshore fleet.

An excellent review of the Irish inshore fisheries sector was carried out by BIM in May 1999, entitled Irish Inshore Fisheries Sector: Review and Recommendations. That review examined the inshore fisheries sector at that time and provided a roadmap for its development, focusing on partnership and stakeholder approaches. The report was innovative and identified the key difficulties facing the sector. It identified avenues to secure sustainability and provide development, addressing socioeconomic needs coupled with good fisheries management practices. In 2005, BIM published an excellent document entitled Managing Ireland's Inshore Fisheries, which outlined in detail a management framework to realise this for 15 shellfish stocks found in inshore waters. That framework forms the basis for the future management of all inshore fisheries in Ireland.

We need to place a proper value on the significance of inshore fisheries in Ireland for the fishery itself and for those who rely on it for a living. Coastal communities do not have the same employment opportunities as those in urban environments and have limited potential for economic diversification. Recognising this is one thing; doing something about it is entirely different. We do not need a task force to investigate how this can be done. We simply need to design policy in line with the two reports referred to in my presentation. I thank the Chairman and members.