Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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I thank Ms Egan for her presentation and will refer to a few points from it. One issue that must be discussed is the activities of the factory ships off the west coast at present. As for what is happening out there, much of it comes down to the difficulty or lack of will in respect of enforcement on the part of Irish authorities. In addition, over the past year or so difficulties have arisen in getting other member states to carry out and to recognise such enforcement activity. An incident occurred last summer in the Irish Sea in which a Danish vessel was boarded by the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, and the Naval Service and was judged to be fishing illegally or engaging in illegal activity and was allocated penalty points under the penalty point regime. However, the Danish Government refused to add those penalty points to the licence of the vessel. Moreover, it then secured quota for that vessel a number of days after the penalty points had been allocated and stated there was no problem. I believe the vessel in question now has been re-flagged and is operating under the flag of another state. There is a problem in respect of how enforcement can be carried out. Over the years, it always has been the case that 85% of the vessels boarded at sea by the Irish Naval Service and the SFPA are Irish, because the authorities know at what they can catch them whereas they do not bother with the rest of them. As Ms Egan is aware, the Spanish Government will not tell one what is the quota position in respect of Spanish vessels and the French Government will not divulge such information in respect of French vessels. Consequently, the authorities here simply do not bother looking at them because they do not have the information to be able to catch them. This is a real problem for Ireland in terms of how we implement the European Union rules and regulations because most fishermen would agree we always have been the most vigorous and accurate in implementing rules but only against our own vessels, while not getting support from or achieving results against the vessels of other member states. This issue must be addressed to have effective management of fisheries stocks. I refer to the fishing in which the Margirisis engaged off the west coast.

According to the SFPA, the Margirisonly had quota for horse mackerel but it is very difficult to catch clean horse mackerel at this time of the year. They had to catch something else along with the horse mackerel so they discarded it, which is breaking the law, or they processed it on board and froze it, which is also breaking the law. There is a lack of will when it comes to enforcing the law and investigating these practices. The SFPA said the weather conditions off the west coast were too dangerous to consider boarding the vessel and inspecting it. That may be true but we could have a system where those vessels would be instructed to come closer to the shore or to a safe harbour where they could be inspected. Perhaps BirdWatch Ireland has a view on this.

This is a serious problem in the attempts to get fishermen to buy into the conservation of stocks. I am from Killybegs and our fleet, even the 23 boats which have most of the quota, will be tied up while Dutch factory vessels will be fishing away happily along our west coast. We have a bigger quota than the Dutch so how do they manage it? On paper, the Margirisis a Lithuanian vessel but it is actually owned by a Dutch company. The Dutch have bought up German companies and now have the German quota as well as the Lithuanian, English and Dutch quotas. How can other fleets continue fishing when they have less quota than we have but our fleets are tied up? It does not make sense.

I have a couple of questions on the slideshow presentation. It showed how achieving MSY would lead to larger landings and more income for fishermen. I know the calculation cannot be done for all stocks but does the report have any detail of how quickly this could be achieved? It would have a huge economic impact on the fishing fleet that set out to do it in the first place and the report must have looked at how long it would take. If we adopted a policy of only achieving MSY, what impact would that have at European level? Are we just relying on the moral right of Ireland adopting this approach to persuade the Dutch and everybody else it is the way to go?

On the upcoming negotiations on stocks and TACs, do the witnesses have any information as to what the likely uplift will be in terms of landing obligation or is this also up for negotiation at the end of December? It will have a significant bearing on how whitefish fishermen, in particular, will be able to buy into the process of managing stocks sustainably. There are proposals within the CFP for small-scale fisheries but I understand it is up to member states to implement them rather than it being done at European level. It will be up to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, to look at small-scale fisheries in Ireland and decide whether to give them a quota to allow them to fish. There is no doubt that smaller-scale fisheries have less impact environmentally and less capacity to catch large amounts of fish. They also have a large economic impact on the small communities that depend on them. If it is up to member states to devise policies and put them in place, what are the barriers to it happening here at this level?

BirdWatch Ireland is part of a wider European lobbying network. What responses are its fellow organisations getting in the different member states around Europe? Is it an uphill battle for everybody? Will any real change take place?