Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 4 December 2025
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2023: Inland Fisheries Ireland
Special Report No. 118 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: Governance, internal control and value for money issues in Inland Fisheries Ireland
2:00 am
Mr. Barry Fox:
That is when these boats are utilised. It is during the salmon window. When the Atlantic salmon reach our shores, these boats come into operation to protect the salmon while they are off the coast. One of the drawbacks we have with these boats is that it is like seeing a fire engine going down the road. The minute these boats are hitched up to a trailer and taken out onto the public highway, word gets around the coastal areas very quickly that we are on route. Therefore, we tend to deploy them as a deterrent and as a kind of rapid response in certain covert situations in which we use them. However, we have other tools we use. We are now using deploying jet skis-----