Dr. Ciarán Byrne:

I talked at length about perception. On the question of whether an aquaculture facility will have an impact on sea angling, I do not believe it will have a significant negative impact. A poorly managed facility could have a significant impact on wild salmonid fisheries, as the Deputy is aware from the Corrib river. If the facility is well managed I do not believe it will have a significant impact, but it is down to perception. When one is trying to get a tourist to book a trip to Ireland and pay money online, an aquaculture facility is likely to have a somewhat negative effect on the perception of sea angling. It may have little or no impact on the actual fishing, but one is managing the perception.

Deputy Pringle raised the issue of drift netting in Arranmore Island. It is a difficult question to answer. On a biological level, it is easy; there are no rivers coming off Arranmore Island.

This means that every salmon which passes the coast is coming from and going to somewhere else. This is the classic bad example in terms of mixed stock fisheries because when one throws a net off Arranmore Island, one can catch 20 salmon that are heading for the River Moy which has a very healthy surplus or the last 20 salmon heading for the River Loire or River Rhine. The mixed stock fishery ceased for this reason. This is a difficult issue for Inland Fisheries Ireland because fishermen are not gardeners, plumbers or painters and want to fish, yet we must tell them they cannot fish for salmon. It is inherent in fishing that one will fish in mixed stock fisheries. I do not see any potential for salmon fishing until such time as the mixed stock nature of the fisheries either improves or one has some confidence that the fish being caught all come from sustainable stocks.

That said, representatives of Inland Fisheries Ireland and the Department attend the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, NASCO, every year. NASCO is a United Nations treaty organisation which encompasses all of the salmon producing countries on the entire Atlantic rim. The issue of socioeconomics is coming to the fore in this regard. One has a management, scientific and socioeconomic aspect to fishing and what we have been doing in recent years is prioritising the scientific aspect. Questions are being asked about how we incorporate socioeconomic factors into scientific and management decisions. Certain countries, Canada, Norway and Sweden for instance, have native populations - Canada has the First Nations peoples, while Norway has the Sami people - to whom they give allowances. To some extent, they have started the process of incorporating socioeconomic factors in decisions. While questions are being asked about socioeconomics at international level, unfortunately, this does not offer much solace to fishermen on Arranmore Island who want to go fishing now. We are starting to move in that direction.