Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I accept that but I wish to make this point. For the future we must protect our natural resources, including the stocks of wild salmon. I hope this brave decision will be seen to bring returns when we can begin to reopen rivers for both anglers and commercial fishermen operating on a draft net basis, thus providing employment opportunities in hotels, commercial fisheries, smokeries and so on for what would be a unique product in a world where salmon is increasingly less available.

Another aspect of the complexity of this issue is that those who were affected most by the end of drift net fishing, by reference to the intensity of their fishing activities, are the ones who were compensated disproportionately well. Anyone who was fishing extensively in the previous five years and had the tag records to show that received a much higher payment than those who may have held a licence but did not undertake an extensive amount of fishing.

This causes difficulty in terms of structuring the support scheme. It is a question of whether we should target those who were intensively engaged in the industry or those who were less involved but, because of this, received less compensation. This is one of the complexities that the departmental officials will have to address in conjunction with the Leader companies.

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