Dr. Susan Steele:

I thank the committee members. The SFPA is the independent statutory body responsible for the regulation of the sea fisheries and the seafood production sectors. It promotes compliance with the EU Common Fisheries Policy, sea fisheries law and food safety law relating to fish and fish products, verifies compliance and, where necessary, enforces it. As a State agency, we come under the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

The SFPA's mandate covers all fishing vessels operating within Ireland's 200-mile limit and more than 2,000 Irish-registered fishing vessels wherever they operate. Our fisheries controls are focused on the landing and subsequent sale of fish in Ireland. We are dependent on the Irish Naval Service and Air Corps under the terms of an agreed service-level agreement for fishery controls at sea. As a coastal state, Ireland has fishery protection obligations for the entire Irish EEZ, within which lies some of the richest fishing grounds in the EU.

In terms of seafood safety, our role covers the Irish seafood sector as a whole up to, but not including, retail. It involves inspections of primary food producers such as fishermen and fish farmers and Ireland's 170 seafood processing companies. Our remit includes the implementation of European hygiene package legislation as well as the inspection and health certification of export consignments going outside the EU. Under service contract to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, the SFPA is responsible for audits and inspections of food businesses, including vessels, in the seafood sector to assess compliance with food safety legislation. Our seafood role also extends to verifying compliance with product labelling regulations, including geographical origin and species declaration.

The authority implements the national microbiological monitoring and classification programme for shellfish production areas and, in collaboration with the Marine Institute and molluscan shellfish safety committee, the national marine biotoxin monitoring programme to manage food safety risk of biotoxins and micro-organisms in molluscs farmed or harvested in Ireland.

The SFPA employs more than 90 people between its headquarters in Clonakilty, County Cork, and its offices in the major ports around the coast: Castletownbere, Dingle, Ros a Mhíl, Killybegs, Howth and Dunmore East, with 77 warranted sea fishery officers.

Regarding the atypical workers scheme, because we are one of the agencies with an ongoing presence on piers and fishing vessels, the SFPA was a signatory in 2015 to the interagency memorandum of understanding, MOU, for the monitoring and enforcement of the terms of employment of non-EEA crewmen in parts of the Irish commercial sea fishing fleet pursuant to the establishment of the atypical worker permission scheme. Arising from the MOU, a risk profiling and inspection group was established, and the SFPA has continued to participate with that group actively. Our resultant role is one of information sharing with the group. In practical terms, this might involve providing information on instances that may arise in the course of our normal inspections to verify compliance with fishery obligations. For example, we might observe indications of labour law breaches or receive information to that effect. In such instances, we have agreed to inform other members of the risk profiling group. Furthermore, if there is a vessel of interest identified by that group, the SFPA has agreed to provide data that are available to us for fishery control purposes. This could include vessel position or pre-notification of landing in order to ensure effective risk-based targeting by the relevant regulator. The SFPA does not carry out inspections to examine compliance with the terms of the atypical workers scheme specifically.

We would like to make the committee aware of a particular initiative undertaken by the SFPA. Following a survey of the fishing industry that indicated a preference for more direct and personal communication, we set up a series of information events covering all of the major fishing regions and invited all local members of the sea fishing and seafood industry. In order to create a on-stop-shop for industry, we invited all relevant State agencies to attend. Some of the participants at these information sessions included the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, Naval Service, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Revenue, Customs and Excise, and Inland Fisheries Ireland as well as other relevant State agencies. Fishermen, therefore, had an opportunity to discuss any issue or concern directly with the WRC and other marine regulatory agencies at these sessions.

One particular aspect of overlap between our work in fishery protection and the matter of concern at this meeting is the provision in specific sea fishing licences for Irish vessels that over 50% of the crew must be EU citizens. As this is included in the fishing licence, it is one of the checks that falls within fishery control verifications but is more amenable to verification at sea.

Our legal mandate and allocated Exchequer funding are for the primary purpose of implementing fishery and food safety law and we have neither a mandate nor legal authority to verify compliance with labour law, including the atypical workers scheme. We do, however, have an ongoing regulatory presence on fishing vessels landing at Irish ports and we have proactively engaged with aligned State agencies to maximise our contribution to the State's role in that regard.