Ms Karen Ciesielski:

I am glad the Senator raised the matter of fisheries. Ireland still has some way to go, as does the EU, to end overfishing in its waters. A key finding of the marine spatial framework directive 2022 was that a total of 34 stocks have achieved good environmental status. That refers to fish stocks. The environmental status of 60% of our stocks is currently unknown. In the case of 44 other stocks good environmental status has not been achieved. The key point is we are not doing enough to ensure that we are not fishing unsustainably. The fact is there is scientific evidence we choose to ignore when it comes to fisheries, and to building a sustainable fisheries economy that would also benefit the communities living along the coast, while protecting our marine environment for future generations. We recently announced two offshore special areas of conservation, bringing our marine protected area, MPA, coverage to 8.3%. We warmly welcomed these announcements. However, this still falls short of the 10% of MPA commitment we were supposed to reach in 2020. We have a long way to go before reaching the 2030 target of 30% of our MPAs. Meanwhile, MPA legislation is currently going through the Dáil. This would copperfasten in Irish law for future generations something we hope will be robust, ambitious and effective. Another policy driver already in place is the national biodiversity action plan. We want to ensure that is well resourced, well funded and target driven.

To answer the Senator's question there is a certain number of things we can do. The first is to follow the science when it comes to fisheries. The second is to ensure the laws we have in place are robust and efficiently managed through, for example, the MPA legislation. There is also the EU nature restoration law which is currently going through in the European Union. If it is robust and ambitious that will go a long way to protecting biodiversity in our marine, coastal and inshore areas.