Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The recommendation to which the Deputy refers requests that the Government examines the feasibility of heritage licences to be issued by the Department for rural coastal and island communities. The intended objective of such licences is, according to the report, to optimally facilitate traditional fishing practices in conjunction with the establishment of a producer organisation representing vessels under a certain length overall, LOA, in these designated areas.

With regard to representation for the rural coastal and island fishing communities, in May 2014 I announced the establishment of innovative consultative structures to bring Ireland’s inshore fishing communities into discussions on the future of Ireland’s seafood industry. In recognition of the need to take a different approach to communicating with Ireland’s small-scale coastal fishermen in view of the very low level of professional trade representation for this part of the industry, both regional and national structures have been put in place. The newly established National Inshore Fisheries Forum, NIFF, and Regional Inshore Fisheries Forums, RIFFs, provide areas for inshore fishermen to develop proposals on inshore fisheries management, including compliance and data gathering. The inshore forums are representative of the “under 12 m” fishing fleet, the fishing boats of less than 12 m overall length and their focus is on fisheries management in the coastal waters within six nautical miles.

To date, the four NIFF meetings have led to very constructive two-way conversations on issues of mutual concern, industry priorities, emerging policies and initiatives. As a result of the successful discussions with the forum, I have included NIFF members on the quota management advisory committee, the industry science fisheries partnership and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, EMFF operational programme monitoring committee. That gives the inshore sector a role in making recommendations on the allocation of Ireland’s quotas, on data collection and scientific research and, perhaps most importantly, on how funding is utilised. The NIFF is taking the industry lead in setting priorities for the policy development for the inshore sector and recommendations from the NIFF are taken very seriously by me. If there is a view among the inshore fishing industry that we should go down such a route to try to create special licensing and conditions around the inshore fleet, we will look at that and discuss it. We are already discussing a whole series of practical things we can do to help the sector, including the development of artisan fisheries, restricting recreational potting, for example, which has been a matter of concern for years and is now being acted on for the first time, or the measure suggested by the Deputy. We will examine the matter in detail but it must be in the context of a discussion with the overall fishing industry to make sure that it will work within the context of the Common Fisheries Policy.

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