Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

New rules restricting fishing vessels' days at sea in the Irish Sea and the waters to the north west of Ireland and Scotland have been introduced as part of the EU's revised cod recovery plan. The plan has introduced a new system of effort management that sets effort ceilings, expressed in kilowatt days, for groups of vessels or fleet segments. The management of these ceilings has been devolved to national level. Member states have received annual allocations of fishing effort for the areas covered by the plan, which include the Irish Sea — International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ICES, area VIIa — and the waters to the north west of Ireland and Scotland — ICES area VIa.

The effort allocation levels were established by the EU Fisheries Council on the basis of a European Commission proposal. They were calculated by averaging the fishing activity levels of each member state in the areas during a reference period of 2004-06 or 2005-07 and then reducing that effort by 25%. This methodology means there is now limited fishing effort available for all Community vessels, including Irish vessels, fishing in the designated areas.

Under the plan, each member state is required to introduce a licensing regime to manage its effort allocations. Any vessel longer than 10 m overall must have an authorisation from its member state in order to operate in one of the designated areas using the fishing gears covered by the plan. Member states can decide on the method of allocating their national pools of fishing effort, which are broken down by fishing gear type. Following consultations with representatives of the Irish fishing industry, a pilot system of authorisations and allocations of fishing effort was introduced for the period 1 February to 30 April 2009.

The pilot scheme used the following approach to allocate fishing effort in areas VIa and VIIa to Irish vessels for the pilot management period of 1 February to 30 April 2009. First, the track records of vessels operating in areas VIa and VIIa during the reference period of 2005-08 were assessed to determine their eligibility to receive an authorisation to fish and an allocation of days at sea under the pilot scheme. Each vessel's "best year" of fishing days in the areas during the reference period was used to establish its track record. Second, distribution bands were established for each of the specified gear types to facilitate the allocation of days at sea to vessels based on their track records with those gears. Each vessel's level of track record with a gear type fit into one of the distribution bands for that gear type. The vessel was then allocated the number days at sea for that gear which were associated with that distribution band. Third, the days at sea allocations for the first management period, 1 February to 30 April 2009, were given on a pro rata basis for each gear type based on Irish vessels' traditional fishing pattern with the gears in the area during that those months. For example, if the months were traditionally very busy for a gear type, a higher portion of days at sea were allocated for that gear.

See this speech in context