Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Gomes for her presentation. She uses scientific analysis when it comes to conservation. While I respect a great deal of the scientific evidence, on its own it is not sufficient. Coming from a fishing background, I was always worried about the buy-in by fishermen because of exclusion. The best people to conserve stocks are the stakeholders who must survive off them. We have an oyster fishery in Tralee Bay which was decimated by overfishing and criminality, with people taking undersized oysters and so forth. Despite the attempts of the south-west regional authority and the South Western Regional Fisheries Board to conserve the fishery, the only way it could be conserved was through adopting a proactive approach by the fishermen who have turned it into probably one of the best policed fisheries in Europe. It is an example to every country. Stocks have recovered and the returns are assigned through quota, with the numbers fishing restricted through permits and everybody buying into this system.

It is done through departmental input and vesting the ownership of the process in the wider community. This has worked brilliantly and it is starting again next week. That is one instance.

I have serious reservations on the question of juvenile fish being taken from the sea and subsequently discarded. Insufficient scientific analysis has been done into the type of gear that is being used to create escapes for juvenile fish and so forth. The market demands prime fish. If a fisherman is trying to get the best possible price for his fish he is going to get the best quality, even if that means dumping twice the amount of fish that come into his nets over the side. A good deal of scientific work needs to be done on the type of gear being used and so forth.

I concur with much of what Ms Gomes said. If we do not conserve stocks, the big losers will be the stakeholders themselves, the people who are actually involved in fishing. It is their livelihood we are talking about. We have many reservations especially in respect of the quota system allocated to various countries and the allocation for Irish fishermen under EU quotas. The quotas are so small. This forces people to become involved perhaps in a type of fishing or certain activities that they would never get involved in otherwise simply in order to survive. It is wider than scientific data; that is the point I am making. We need an overall analysis of how best to conserve stocks with the support of fishermen while ensuring that they have an income from the type of work they do.

Ms Gomes referred to lobsters. Much has been done voluntarily in certain areas in respect of the notching of female lobsters to conserve stocks and so forth. A more mandatory approach should be taken to ensure stocks survive. Added pressures come on certain stocks as a consequence of decisions taken by Government, the European Commission and so forth. Let us consider what happened in this country in respect of salmon drift netting. At the stroke of a pen they wiped out the livelihood for many people who had a reasonable income for a period of the year. One consequence was that people who had been involved in salmon fishing transferred into lobster, cray fishing, gill netting and so forth, putting other pressures on those sectors.

We need an approach that is forward looking on the scientific side and on the economic feasibility side for fishermen. We need an approach that will secure buy-in from everyone involved, in particular, the stakeholders, to try to bring this around. I am looking at this strictly from an Irish context. I realise the point of view of Ms Gomes is global in respect of what needs to be done. I thank Ms Gomes for her presentation. It is quite informative and obviously she put a good deal of work into it. We differ on certain aspects, but that is healthy. If we all agreed-----