Dr. Paul Connolly:

I will respond to Deputy Ó Cuív's questions on the role of the Marine Institute and SACs. The competent authority for Natura 2000 is the National Parks and Wildlife Service. This is part of EU legislation, which Ireland as a member of the EU must comply with.

The role of the Marine Institute is to work with our colleagues in different Departments and semi-State agencies and look at the risks associated with fishing activity in relation to special areas of conservation, SACs. The best way of defining our role would be to give members an example. The cockle fishery in Dundalk Bay is in a special area of conservation. The Marine Institute surveys the cockles to determine the biomass of the cockles. We define a management plan with the local stakeholders on the quantity of cockles to be taken out. We must not just consider human consumption, but the food for the very important bird populations. We need to define the quantity of the cockles to set aside, not alone for the fishermen but also for the birds that live there.

In a sense we develop a management plan for the cockles in that SAC. We want to ensure the sustainable exploitation of the cockles and that the birds have enough food to live on because they are intrinsic to the SAC. We define a closed season and open sea and the best time to fish for these cockles. Working with the different players, we come up with a management plan. Our role would be to assess the resource, determine its size and work with the stakeholders to try to quantify how much we can sustainbly take out of the resource. Between SACs and SPAs, there are 29 bays on which we are working at present. To set up management plans and give the advice to the stakeholders requires a great deal of background data. We must establish the benthos of the bay, the bird population and one needs all this information to develop management plans.

I would now like to respond to the two questions from Deputy Ferris. We cannot land seabass in Ireland. It is a very frustrating part of daily life for fishermen when their colleagues from France and the United Kingdom can land bass and they cannot. The bass population was in a serious state of decline and this triggered the stop on the exploitation of bass. It was an Irish regulation. The EU will establish quotas for bass across the EU, and the talk is that they will be introduced next year.

Allied to that, there is now international scientific advice on the quantity of bass that can be caught at sea. It is the first time we have had such advice.

Another element which comes into the complex equation is the forthcoming discard ban in the CFP. It is illegal for Irish fishermen to land seabass, but when they catch them, it will be illegal to discard them. We have a dilemma and the way out is to develop a management plan. All stakeholders in the seabass fishery, including anglers, must consider what their objectives are and attempt to reach a consensus on a management plan. Such a plan might involve closed seasons and a mechanism whereby fishermen may not target seabass, but any seabass they catch, they may land and sell. Given the policy changes which are about to happen in the CFP and the idea of a total allowable catch coming in, there must be a coming together of the anglers who want to retain the ban on landings and the industry which is intensely frustrated by the ban.