Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Carey, and thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for facilitating this matter. The Foyle Area (Control of Fishing) Regulations 2010 were made on 2 June 2010 and have been operational since 11 June 2010. The Loughs Agency, with the approval of the North-South Ministerial Council and the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Ryan, introduced the regulations in exercise of the powers conferred by section 13(1) of the Foyle Fisheries Act 1952.

The Minister, Deputy Ryan, stated that the regulations have been introduced because "the numbers of migrating salmon counted going upstream in the Rivers Mourne, Faughan, Roe and Finn are below the specified stock level target numbers". In practice the regulation prevents 28 commercial fishermen, ten draftnet fishermen and 18 driftnet fishermen who did not opt into the voluntary buy-out scheme three years ago from fishing Lough Foyle for salmon in 2010. Last week the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, told me in response to a parliamentary question that these 28 fishermen will not be provided with loss of earnings compensation.

This is a flawed fishery management framework. Everybody understands and supports the principle of conservation. Our marine industry is in trouble and it will die completely if we do not have fish stocks. That is accepted. However, the fishery management framework that underpins this regulation assumes that commercial fishermen are exclusively responsible for depletion of fish stock. That is a very simplistic and naive argument.

The Foyle Area (Control of Fishing) Regulations 2010 is the 20th conservation regulation imposed on Lough Foyle commercial fishermen since 2007 and the Government still has not taken any action to curb predator seals and cormorant birds that forage on fish stocks in Lough Foyle. A study entitled Assessment of Harbour Seal Predation on adult salmonoids in a Pacific Northwest Estuary written by Bryan Wright, Susan D. Riemer and Robin F. Brown notes that harbour seals consumed one fifth of the estimated salmon run in the marine site they chose for the purposes of research. The study calls for a new fishery management framework with reference to control of abundant nature species.

I refer to the seal population. The Irish Marine Institute estimated in 2000 that 6,976 seals live off the Irish coast. That was ten years ago. There is no comprehensive up-to-date study but we know that seal populations have exploded since top predation ended.

I refer to the Lough Foyle cormorants and seals. In the case of Lough Foyle salmon, cormorants eat the smolts, the young salmon, that leave the lough for salt water and then seals kill the mature salmon that return. The adult seal eats 1.9 kg of salmon per day. The seal also kills for sport. Multiplied over a year and leaving aside salmon killed by seals for sport, the adult seal may eat up to 730 kg of salmon per annum. The average seasonal return of a Lough Foyle commercial net fisherman is 650 kg, which is less. One seal kills more salmon stock than one commercial salmon fisherman. Anecdotal evidence confirms that there are more than 28 seals in Lough Foyle. Seals are killing more Lough Foyle salmon than commercial fishermen.

I refer to the case for compensation. The livelihood of 28 commercial fishermen is seriously damaged by this ban. These men did not sign up to the salmon hardship fund offered to salmon fishermen in 2007 because they did not anticipate this ban.

Will the Government commission a survey on the number of predator seals and cormorants on Lough Foyle? Does it agree that the fishery management framework needs to be broadened to possibly include control of abundant predator species? Is either of the Foyle Fisheries Act 1952 or the Foyle Area (Control of Fishing) Regulation 2010 subject to derogation?

This debate is not facile and the solutions are not simplistic. I spoke to Michelle Gildernew, MLA, the Minister's counterpart in Stormont yesterday. I understood her say that it is a very black and white issue. There is no salmon so commercial fisherman are banned.

There is an opportunity to allow fishermen to fish on a small scale with small boats, small quotas and for a limited number of days at sea. It would get people back working. It is an opportunity for the Government to get people along the coast working again. I ask the Minister not to bring the debate down to a facile level, that is, that commercial fishermen are destroying the stock. They are not because they are not even fishing.

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