Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have done okay in the negotiations on the new fisheries fund. Under the previous CFP, Ireland received a total of €70 million from the fund. This time we will receive €147 million, which is more than double what we received the last time. The €32 million for data collection will come out of that. More than €70 million will be available for sea-fisheries development and investment, mainly through BIM, and it will help fishermen to adapt to the new realities of the CFP. We should not lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, this is about fishing in a way that ensures there are more fish in the sea in the future. It is not about stopping people fishing; it is about allowing a maximum commercial return from fishing while, at the same time, ensuring we do not fish in a way that fundamentally undermines the existence of a stock. The challenge for us is to make that change and to keep fishermen in business while building stocks by managing the volume of fish they catch on the basis of the available science.

More important, by helping people to change the way they fish, we will ensure we only catch the fish that we want to land and sell and a have a quota to catch. That is why we are looking at new technology, innovations, net shapes and escape hatches for juvenile fish. For example, square mesh panels are proposed for the Celtic Sea west of the 8o line to ensure juvenile fish can escape while cod and haddock are predominantly caught in that area. Significant volumes of whiting and mixed fish are caught on the other side of the 8o line but that is a more complicated problem because we do not want adult whiting escaping while also allowing for cod and haddock to escape.

This is ongoing discussion to try to find ways to allow fishermen to catch the volume they need to make a living while, at the same time, avoiding catching juvenile fish which should be caught 12 months later as a commercial catch. In some mixed fisheries, there has been between 40% and 60% discards on the basis of the volume of what was caught. That is a disaster for sustainability, stock management and future breeding stock and commercial catches. We are making the switch from a landing quota, which is the essence of the change under the CFP. Currently, fishermen are given a landing quota. They are allowed land a certain tonnage of fish. If they catch twice that when they are at sea, they dump half of it over the side. They are entitled to do that because that is how the system works. However, they will not be allowed to do that anymore. Instead, they will be given a catch quota as opposed to a landing quota, which changes the entire dynamic because now they must be much more targeted about what they catch because they have to land everything they catch. They are some flexibilities in the context of species for quota management and between years, which fishermen will understand. However, that is the principle underpinning what we are trying to do.

This should mean higher quotas in the future. Currently, quotas are set on the basis of factoring in discards in a fishery and if they do not have to be factored in, fishermen should be able to catch more fish and do so sustainably if they avoid juveniles and other bycatch. The purpose of this is more profitable fishing, more fish in the sea, a much more efficient way of catching them and avoiding bycatch and damaging stocks. That is easy to say but it is a big challenge to implement it, particularly in the mixed fisheries. That is why we have people such as Noel Cawley involved. He is an experienced character in trying to secure compromise, finding a way forward and so on.

I understand Deputy Ferris's concerned response to this. I am also concerned.

When we met them, the fishing industry representatives were concerned, as could be expected. We can make arguments to try to reduce a damaging outcome. We are focusing on two key areas. First, many of the stocks that have a 20% cut applied are data-limited stocks. It is a precautionary principle which we will fundamentally oppose. If fishermen have to live by science and there is no science in this regard, we should not be punishing them. That is totally unacceptable as far as I am concerned. If there is science suggesting we have to reduce the quota to protect the stock, we have to do it, but I am not going to ask fishermen to catch less fish if there is no science to back that up. That is one principle around which we will be making a very strong argument.

The other key area is the Celtic Sea, which is a hugely valuable fishery primarily for cod, haddock and whiting. There are also some prawns there and a big herring fishery. Dramatic reductions have been proposed for cod and haddock. We have a piece of scientific research ongoing which will be finished by the end of next week, so we will have it literally days before the Council. We believe, or hope, that scientific evidence, although it obviously needs to be accurate, will show a more optimistic picture of recruitment levels in haddock and cod. We will have to wait and see. We are not going to make that up. It has to stand up to scrutiny. We are going to make a very strong case on the back of that evidence, which is the most up-to-date science on the Celtic Sea, to change the Commission's proposals in that area. The industry is working with us on that as well as the Marine Institute.

The other big area is prawns. The recommendation in terms of the science for prawns is for a slight increase in numbers whereas the actual recommendation is for a 14% cut. There is a debate to be had on that. We need to address their reason for proposing a 14% cut. There are also some pressures on certain prawn fisheries that we have to acknowledge and recognise, especially around the Aran Islands where there is reason to believe that the prawn fishery is under some pressure. The way in which we set quotas for prawns is by just giving one bulk figure for the whole of area 7, which includes the Irish Sea, the south coast of Ireland, the Porcupine Bank and the Aran Islands. We manage that by fleets moving at different times of the year to different fishing grounds, which has worked well. The danger of giving a specific quota to each individual fishing ground would mean that the whole fleet would go to each one, fish it out until the quota is gone and then move to the next one. The scientific advice we get from certain quarters is that would be very damaging.

We are trying to maintain a whole of area 7 approach towards managing quota, but if we need to look at measures to protect certain prawn stocks, such as we had in the Porcupine Bank, for example, where we had no-fishing periods to protect the stock and allow it to recover, which it has, and it has been a very successful outcome, and if we have to do something similar in other areas, we will have to look at that. We need to try to work with the industry to make sure we can do that because there are many small boats relying on that fishery around the Aran Islands. It is primarily - in fact, entirely - an Irish fleet fishing in those grounds so we need to take that into account. Many of those small boats do not have the capacity to go to the Porcupine Bank and certainly not to go all the way around to the Irish Sea. We are looking at that and talking to the industry about it.

There are things we can do about data-limited stocks, prawns and the Celtic Sea. We already have agreement from the industry on some of the areas, for example, the reduction in the boarfish quota, which is accepted, and I am reliably informed by Dr. Cecil Beamish that the mackerel quota is the highest since 1987 barring this year. It is a pretty decent-sized mackerel quota for next year, although in terms of concerns about factories, I can understand the point Deputy Pringle is making. This is about more than boats. It is about factories and jobs on land in terms of volume and processing, and in some cases freezing, shipping and so on. A figure of 89,000 tonnes of mackerel is high.