Mr. Francis O'Donnell:

Much of the legislation is quite antiquated. We are relying on a 1959 Act for fisheries prosecutions and Acts from 1977 and 1990 for the water quality side of things. It should possibly be an A, B and C category offence type system. To some degree, a District Court or Circuit Court judge can impose a fine within a range at the moment, but I think that range is not sufficient. We would have had situations over the last number of years where 5,000 or 10,000 juvenile salmon or trout were killed in a river system. That is only what we could actually see. That is very significant and it takes a long time for that system to recover. In some cases, it is done accidentally. In other cases, we believe it is done deliberately. A small fine of €2,000 or €3,000 is not significant and for environmental crimes like that. Small fines do not deter people from doing it again in the future. That needs to be reviewed and looked at. We are working with our parent Department at the moment on revising our own legislation. We are looking at the A, B, C category fine system as well. Obviously, that would have to be consolidated and brought before the Houses of the Oireachtas. That is probably about a year away. That is something agencies should be looking at with regard to small fines. People are committing significant fishery offences and getting fines of €400 or €500.