Mr. Andrew Kinneen:

I would like to continue our chairperson's statement by giving the European context for the points system. As a member state of the European Union, Ireland implements the Common Fisheries Policy where there exist various obligations for fishers and also for member state authorities within that regulatory framework. For the purpose of today's discussions there are four particularly relevant European Union regulations. I refer the committee to European Council Regulation No. 1005 of 2008 and European Council Regulation No. 1224 of 2009.

These regulations contain general provisions requiring that sanctions for fishery non-compliances should be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. The control regulation requires member states to ensure that any enforcement sanction effectively deprives those responsible for any illegal fishing of any economic benefit derived from the infringement, and that sanction take into account the value of the fishery products and-or the assessment of the impact on the fishery resource and the marine environment concerned. The control regulation additionally sets down that one component of the required sanctioning system in the case of certain serious infringements must include the imposition of points for licence holders. Ireland is meeting this obligation through SI 3 of 2014.

A key part to implementation of this system is to understand what is a serious infringement. The EU Commission established the concept of a serious infringement and a points system for serious infringements with the aim of ensuring compliance with the rules of the CFP and a level playing field in all EU waters. Everyone is agreed that there has been an absence of a level playing field when it comes to applying sanctions to serious infringements. There is a great variety within the member states on what sanctions are applied and how they are applied. The European regulations therefore created a defined list of infringement categories that might be considered as serious infringement, if they are sufficiently grave. Therefore, in order for an infringement to be considered "serious" it must fall into one of the defined categories and be sufficiently serious.

The competent authority in the member state is required to make a judgment of the gravity taking into account criteria such as the nature of the damage to the stock, the value of the fish taken, the extent of the infringement or repetitive misbehaviour. There are 12 categories of serious infringements which attract points. They are listed individually. We also have an annex, with the paper supplied, which goes into detail. To characterise them generally they try to capture infringements where a person operates on the public resource without an entitlement; that is, the person does not have a licence, takes under-size fish or does not respect limitations, quotas and so on. While I will not go through them individually, I ask the committee to be aware that is the general theme.

Each of the 12 categories is ascribed a defined number of points in the implementing rules for the control regulation. When an infringement falls into one of those categories, and is deemed to be sufficiently grave to be regarded as a serious infringement, the authorities are obliged to allocate that number of points to the licence holder. The annex makes a reference to the serious infringement and the points that go with it. The number of points to be allocated is set down for each category and there is no discretion for the authorities once an infringement has been deemed serious. The annex will provide full details of what points are applied to each of the 12 serious infringements

The deterrent effect of points on non-law abiding licence holders is two-fold. There is the potential cumulative effect of points assigned. The European Union regulations set down that when 18 points have been accumulated the licence should be suspended for a period of two months. This is not discretionary. The vessel would then go back to fish with those 18 points still on the licence, and any further points would result in further and longer suspension periods. Specifically at 36 points, where another threshold is reached, there should be a further four months suspension. If the licence continues to be associated with serious infringements the accumulation of 54 points should result in eight months suspension, and 72 points should result in a one year suspension, if repeated serious infringements continue to be associated with that licence, despite four previous suspensions, then the requirement is that the licence be permanently withdrawn. The EU regulations set out that points remain on the licence for a period of three years after the last serious infringement. Thus even if the points from one serious infringement are almost three years old, a subsequent serious infringement would add new points and prolong the duration of the earlier points assigned for a further three years. There is a specific provision in the EU scheme, for licences with more than two but less than 90 points, for two points to be deleted from a licence if the vessel were to undertake to fish in certain favourable manners. The voluntary actions which might result in this deletion are as follows.

For example, if a fishing vessel was not obliged to carry a VMS monitoring system - smaller vessels are not so obliged - but undertook to do so, as a show of good faith that they would change their behaviours, that would be recognised. If the licence holder volunteers the vessel for a scientific campaign to improve gear selectivity, which would obviously help conservation efforts, that would be recognised. If the licence holder adopts a reduction of 10% fishing opportunity for a year, in other words take a hit themselves by way of pay-back for the damage caused by their misbehaviours in not complying with the CFP, that would be recognised. If the licence holder joins an eco-labelling scheme with the focus on well-managed sustainable fisheries, that would be recognised. The committee may be familiar with these where the Marine Stewardship Council or others go into detail on the fishing methods and the efforts made to minimise discards or to use conservation-friendly gears. One of these voluntary methods could be used to delete two points in a three year period.

In addition to potential suspension or withdrawal for repeat offenders there is a further deterrent effect for licence holders subject to points. The EU regulations set out an explicit obligation for points to accompany the licence if the vessel is sold, and for potential licence sellers to inform would-be purchasers. In an Irish context this is relevant to the sale of fishing capacity and the sale of any capacity associated with a licence will bring the number of points with every portion of that capacity to a new licence.

Thus there is likely to be an immediate marked effect of devaluation of the potential market value of vessel capacity with points assigned to it. Obviously such an effect would be realised only if any of the capacity associated with the licence were to be put up for sale.