Mr. Barry Fox:

No, I am not concerned about it. For us to establish a new fish counter on the Boyne would involve us putting in a crump weir or something similar in the river, which would impede protected species from migrating through the river, so it is not a policy I would advise pursuing.

To put it in context, in particular around salmon, our national conservation limit for salmon is 258,414. We are now sitting at 155,000, so while some rivers still have surpluses, most of the rivers in the State are under the conservation limit. There are a lot of issues around the management advice for 2026, but it needs to be taken in the context that salmon are in rapid decline. There are a lot of reasons for that. We do not blame anglers or commercial fishermen, but we have to take action to try to arrest the decline and that is what we are trying to do. Unfortunately, the Boyne is well below its conservation limit. There are merger issues in the Boyne. Some 53% of it is arterially drained, so production is lower than it should be for a catchment of that size. In recent years, we have been making significant investment in the Boyne to restore the habitats in the river. Hopefully, in the coming years we will see a reverse in the decline and an increase in fish.