Mr. Micheál O'Mahony:

I thank the sub-committee for its invitation to attend along with our colleagues in aligned State agencies. On behalf of my fellow authority members I wish to express our welcome for the initiative to focus on Ireland’s inshore and aquaculture sectors. The SFPA welcomes interest in the public services we provide. We believe that our work is integral to the support and protection of a profitable future for these sectors. In these, and all seafood sectors, SFPA’s role involves the promotion, verification and, if necessary, enforcement of compliance with sea fisheries conservation and seafood safety legislation.

The authority was established as Ireland’s competent authority charged with ensuring compliance with both sea fisheries conservation and seafood safety legislation in Ireland. This two-fold role sees us working with wild catchers and aquaculture producers and includes seafood processors up to, but not including, retail. Key components of our work include inspection of fishing landings, co-operation with the Irish Naval Service regarding monitoring and inspection of vessels at sea, sampling of shellfish production areas, inspection of processing establishments, certification of exported seafood consignments, and representation of Ireland’s approach to fishery protection and seafood safety at various EU and international fora. The authority works with its sea fisheries protection consultative committee. We are happy to report that the recent appointments made by the Minister to the committee included representatives of inshore fishing and the fin-fish and shellfish aquaculture sectors.

With regard to the inshore wild catching sector, the vessels involved in the sector numerically constitute the largest component of the vessels in the Irish fishing fleet. Approximately 75% of the 2,162 vessels in the Irish fleet are less than 10 m in length. In general, these inshore vessels operate on a day-trip basis and target high value fish such as prawns, pollock, turbot, brill, mackerel, crustaceans such as lobsters, crayfish or crab, and shellfish such as razors clams, scallops or whelks. The fishing gear used and fishing patterns of these inshore fishing vessels leave a generally light environmental footprint as their operating range and capacity is restricted by the size of the fishing vessels used and their vulnerability to bad weather and sea conditions. The value of the harvest from these waters contributes significantly to the local economy of our coastal and island communities.

There is generally a culture of compliance in inshore fisheries in Ireland. For example, the v-notch and berried lobster schemes have proved successful initiatives in protecting and improving inshore lobster stocks. In general terms, the SFPA has found a laudably strong sense of ownership and responsibility shown by inshore fishers in the conduct of their business. That is not to say the sector is without compliance issues. Fishing by unlicensed and unregistered fishing vessels continues to be something we detect. It is unfair competition for legitimate fishers who have invested their money to operate their fishing vessels in a compliant manner. Also, a small number of disreputable restaurants seek undersized lobsters from fishermen in an effort to maximise the profits they make from their gourmet clients. Illegal commercial fishing for bass is also a problem in some parts of Ireland.

The authority's role in verifying compliance with fishery conservation legislation is performed on a risk basis. We tailor our inspection programme to ensure the best possible protection of Ireland’s marine resources. Inshore fishing vessels are generally viewed as being low risk given their catching ability relative to other fishing vessels. There is no sector that receives zero official controls, but the frequency of inspections increases with vessel size. Collated 2011 figures of inspections of Irish vessels by the SFPA at port, or the Irish Naval Service at sea, indicate an average of 0.3 inspections per under-10 m Irish vessel per year. The analogous figure for over-24 m Irish vessels is 6.8 inspections per vessel per year.

To ensure an appropriate platform from which to base a meaningful regulatory support to inshore fishermen, the SFPA has procured its own rigid inflatable boats, RIBs. The boats were purchased following a previous appearance by the SFPA before the Oireachtas joint committee where a committee member observed that we should have sea-going capacity for this work. The authority works closely with Inland Fisheries Ireland and the Naval Service to maximise efficiency in promoting compliance with the management rules for the inshore sector. While we cannot be at every landing point every day of the week, the often close-knit nature of the inshore sector ensures a useful flow of information to our confidential line which we follow up.

Our legislative mandate includes an explicit role in promoting compliance. The authority has identified particular challenges faced by the inshore wild catching sector when it comes to an awareness and understanding of its legal obligations. The intricacy of the regulations, the frequency with which they change, coupled with the part-time seasonal nature of this work and absence of a representative organisation with whom we can discuss these issues can hamper overall compliance levels. Therefore, the authority took the initiative to engage with representatives of the inshore sector in the south east to develop a comprehensive, user-friendly guidance document for use by the sector. The outcome is a Guide to Compliance for the inshore sector that outlines in one document the key legal requirements for these fishers. We printed the leaflet, including a leagan Gaeilge, and made it available free of charge through our regional port offices to these fishers. It was printed on tear-resistant and moisture-resistant paper. We have included the leaflet in the pack that we provided to the sub-committee today. We have received reassuringly positive feedback from fishers. I ask members to browse the leaflet and we are happy to receive feedback.

The authority is committed to the minimal intrusion in the working lives of fishers and continues to put much effort into the utilisation of remote sensing data to enable verification of compliance from a distance. We have chosen to implement a derogation available to fishing vessels over 12 m for approximately 50% of the Irish 12 m to 15 m sector, exempting them from using electronic logbooks when their fishing patterns allow. Recently, we made a submission to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform proposing that we fund from our budget a pilot scheme to trial the use of small-scale, user-friendly data logging devices for use in smaller vessels. They would facilitate demonstration of compliance with both fishery and environmental legislation.

Within the context of the mandate of the sub-committee, and our competence in sea fisheries and food safety regulation, we can see some opportunities. We see potential in harnessing the authority's vessel positioning to support particular marketing claims such as labelling fish as caught off the coast of west Cork. We believe that the fish caught by the inshore sector have many unique selling points, particularly for the Irish consumer. They range from its low food miles to its freshness due to short trip to its artisan attention to detail in primary handling to its direct contribution to coastal economies.

We are currently working with our colleagues in BIM and the fishing industry on a project designed to ensure regulatory compliance with obligations around traceability and provision of information to consumers, and we see benefits in differentiation of inshore seafood.

A key challenge already mentioned facing some traditional inshore fisheries has been the implementation of EU directives designed to ensure the protection of environmental habitats. Following ministerial direction in 2009, the SFPA has been active in demonstrating Ireland's compliance with these obligations. SFPA-devised control plans have provided assurance that inshore fishing vessels can operate within areas under special protection without damaging the habitat being protected. The accurate recording of catches and the precise tracking of fishing operations are key features of these control plans, which are necessary for Ireland's opening of fisheries and aquaculture in inshore Natura-designated special areas of conservation.

The shellfish aquaculture sector is an important feature of Ireland's inshore coastal waters, with approximately 70 production areas classified and monitored by the SFPA in co-operation with the Irish Marine Institute. Bottom-grown mussels, rope-grown mussels and trestle-grown oysters are key production systems, and Ireland's industry is primarily export-oriented, with particular reliance on European Union continental markets.

The production of these live bivalve molluscs is subject to a prescriptive regulatory regimen in EU legislation, designed to manage health risks associated with both algal toxins and micro-organisms. The production and sale of these seafood products must be underpinned by robust official control and monitoring systems which classify production areas according to the bacterial conditions present and manage the weekly opening and closing according to changing algal blooms. These official control sampling programmes require significant SFPA resource deployment, in the order of 20% to 25% of the resource available to us.

We work with the shellfish aquaculture sector, particularly the Irish Shellfish Association, to try to achieve the best balance in protecting consumers and Ireland's market reputation while facilitating the practicalities of harvesting and trade in these food products. We have been particularly active at an EU level in working to influence the legislative standards being developed with these objectives in mind. At this time some of the regulatory changes being proposed are likely to prove challenging for the sector, especially in the area of standards for toxins and viruses of public health significance.

Regarding fin fish aquaculture, the SFPA's role centres around ensuring that the food safety obligations expected of producers are being met. From our initial creation in 2007 we developed a programme of official controls to verify compliance with the European food safety, animal remedy and animal by-product regulations at these sites. We worked with the Irish Salmon Growers' Association, hosting an information session to explain and orient producers within their legal obligations. We received strong feedback from that sector concerning regulatory burdens arising from the involvement of various State agencies. We have therefore collaborated with State colleagues to streamline our official controls into part of a single wide-ranging inspection, verifying a variety of matters, performed by a single official on a single visit. We believe such a joined-up approach to discharging Ireland's obligations is good for everyone - industry, State agencies, taxpayers and consumers.

Ireland's seafood sector is export-oriented. Market access for food outside Ireland depends on trust in the official control systems. The food control authorities of importing countries depend on the assurances provided by the authorities of exporting countries. In the case of Irish seafood exported outside the EU, SFPA officers are responsible for attesting to the safety of the product and the legitimacy of the catching vessel, with catch certificates and health certificates. Without this SFPA work, Irish exporting of seafood would not exist.

Since our creation in 2007, the SFPA has been a key interlocutor in negotiating market access for Irish seafood in Japan, Russia and China, as well as achieving a significant reduction in the regulatory burden required for Irish seafood exports to the United States. A substantial component of our available resource is devoted to this work, both at a central level through the Department of Foreign Affairs, working with the resource-intensive expectations of importing country authorities, and through our officers on the ground, working with Irish exporters to provide the necessary certification for every individual consignment leaving Ireland going to a third country.

Seafood - particularly high-value products, notably including live molluscs, live crab and smoked salmon - tends to have perishability characteristics which result in a large number of low-volume consignments, with challenging transport logistics. This is a demanding and increasing part of our work. In 2011 our officers issued health certificates for 932 consignments comprising 26,000 tonnes of Irish seafood going to 39 different countries. In 2012 that had risen to 1,437 consignments, 63,000 tonnes and 44 third countries outside the EU. While that is a clear manifestation of the benefits of industry compliance, we struggle to service industry expectations and support Government policy to increase the volume and value of output and exports of seafood as envisaged in Food Harvest 2020. We believe our resourcing must acknowledge this regulatory output so that we can provide the necessary industry support.

I hope the SFPA's commitment to supporting the continued success of the inshore and aquaculture sectors is evident in our brief presentation. While we sit here, SFPA staff are working hard to implement Government policy, dealing with real people who are working hard to try to make their livelihoods in these sectors. We strongly believe that fit-for-purpose regulations are an integral pillar of the successful future of these sectors. Our work supports the ongoing viability of compliant operators. These industries are clearly the backbone of the coastal and island communities and we look forward to being part of their future. We would welcome any questions committee members might have for us.