Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the chance to speak about angling and Inland Fisheries Ireland. I agree with Deputy O'Dowd that it does some really good work. Dr. Ciaran Byrne and his team are really committed to the job. It did a very good gig at the Minister of State's instigation last October, in Buswells, where it invited every Member of the House over to brief us on its work. Some of us did not go, but those of us who did go and who know IFI and work with it know that it is very committed. It gets things wrong and I am not going to beatify it by any means, but its heart is in the right place, and it faces a very difficult challenge.

I come from Ballinagh, the salmon capital of Ireland, as designated by Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and IFI. I do not have to go the 1700s because I remember growing up as a child, the amount of salmon that were in the River Moy in the 1980s. I remember the then fisheries company netting salmon in the middle of the town on a nightly basis. There would be dozens of good, big salmon in that net. It was a tourist attraction. It was pretty barbaric back in the day but it was very natural and the river was incredibly healthy. Even five years ago, I remember a night in town, walking home where I could see the river glistening with salmon that were in it. After a heavy fall of rain, there was about a week of really good catches.

Those days are now few and far between. We criminalised sea communities back in 2006 by banning drift-netting, thinking that it was the big solution. It was not, and yet these communities remain criminalised. They were given paltry compensation and not given any kind of a future as fishermen. We seem unable to grasp all of the various issues around dealing with compensation. As many speakers have referred to, this is an industry worth €836 million. Some 11,000 people are employed in it, and we only have three people in the Chamber. We all have to make up for that because the future of the industry is under threat. If one could imagine any other industry with that level of commitment to our economy and that level of employment, if it was facing an insecure future, there would be task forces and urgent debates, and the Ceann Comhairle would be killed for Topical Issues on it. Somehow we do not grasp the challenge facing inland fisheries and inland angling in particular, and we must.

IFI is a Twenty-six County organisation. I do not how that got under the radar of the Good Friday Agreement. Salmon do not worry about the Border. Nobody worries about the Border at the moment. It should be an all-island organisation to do the necessary research. We have to do more research on a European basis, and on an island basis, and with our neighbours in England, Scotland and Wales about the Atlantic and about the Irish Sea, and where the salmon are going there. They are not coming into the seas either.

9 o’clock

We can look at the issues with rivers and curtail planning and agriculture, but the reality is that they are no longer at sea. I commend IFI and its vigilance in managing the application from the other fisheries organisation concerning the salmon farm off the Aran Islands. It is extraordinary that a State company involved in fisheries would try to develop a salmon farm in a wild Atlantic area. The Wild Atlantic Way is not designed for salmon farms, particularly with the weather conditions there which could damage our existing salmon stock.

Deputy O'Dowd raised some very good issues. For his information, there are some fantastic initiatives under way to get younger people involved. There is a relatively new initiative at home, from the Moy catchment association, targeting young boys and girls to get them into the habit of angling. Growing up, and even as an adult, I have always admired the patience of an angler. I do not have it and I will never have it. They are able to stand up to their armpits in water and be teased by a fish, and yet stay there to catch it. I regularly see it happen at home. Nine times out of ten the fish will not be caught. It is an art and a sport in itself, and it would be a shame if we were the last generation to see that sport, to enjoy that sport, and to see the economic benefit of that sport. Anglers travel all over the world.

The Ridge Pool is a mecca for anglers who travel from all over the world, who book their spot on the pool years in advance sometimes, just to get that two or three hours of fishing. They may leave it without a catch, and even if they get a catch they probably have to release it back into the river again. They go there for that thrill. No one can put a price on that. We in Ballina cannot envisage a future without having our very healthy river going through the town.

It is ridiculous that we cannot sell Moy salmon, even for a few weeks a year. It is inconceivable that one would go to Belgium and not be able to buy Belgian chocolate, or go to France and not be able to get French cheese. Salmon is one of our national dishes and we cannot sell Moy salmon. The salmon on sale in town is not what it could be. We could sell it for a few weeks a year, and include a levy which would go back into managing and protecting the river so that we continue to have that supply. We are not talking about cowboys, but rather people in restaurants and local angling associations who respect the river and respect the need for a healthy river. It is something I would ask the Minister to consider.

I have made the point about an all-Ireland angling association. Another issue that I want to highlight and pay tribute to is the Casting for Recovery agency, a group of female anglers, all of whom are breast cancer survivors and who have taken up angling as part of their recovery. Patience is part of the rebuilding of their health and IFI is fantastic in supporting them. It also does wonderful work in the summer to get children angling. I mentioned the Moy catchment association, which is a new initiative. IFI, and previously the North Western Regional Fisheries Board, hosted camps over the summer. We need to get it going into schools, partnering up with the green flag initiative, especially around water management, and making fish stocks and fish management a much more integrated part of that rather than just water management and water usage in the home. We need our children's generation to understand that a vibrant system of fish and healthy rivers are part of our own ecosystem. If our fish start dying, what is next? If children understand that, they will give us the lecture.

When the showmanship is taken away, Deputy Mattie McGrath raised some issues that have not been properly dealt with or communicated. How is it that rivers are no longer cleaned? It is an Office of Public Works, OPW, issue. IFI is being blamed in the wrong here. When dealing with flood situations, IFI is practical and it will try to engage. The rivers are not being cleaned the way they were, and there seems to be a myriad of agencies blocking the basic maintenance of the river. We have a situation this evening where An Bord Pleanála has blocked an Irish Water scheme from proceedings, which will affect some 20,000 households in south Sligo, because of the presence of snails on the shores of Lough Talt. Surely that could have been managed and handled before it went to An Bord Pleanála and incurring the level of expense it has.

We have to look also at why farmers are not being allowed to open up drains and why Coillte is not being allowed to cut trees to open up rivers and the passage of rivers to ensure those rivers are not being blocked and fish are able to travel. We must take this seriously. IFI needs to re-engage with communities, with farming organisations as to their policies, and with tourism organisations. Equally, IFI itself needs to be taken seriously as an organisation. We marketed the Wild Atlantic Way, and the money that has been spent on that shows that relatively little investment can produce a major return. A relatively small investment in IFI could produce a very significant return considering its ability to promote Ireland as an angling destination. It could invest in facilities along rivers to make them more angler friendly, including facilities for disabled anglers, children and women who wish to fish. There is so much potential for IFI. A relatively small investment could bring that €836 million up even higher and increase those 11,000 jobs to 15,000. If IFI gets the budget and a sense of freedom to manage that budget, we could see phenomenal results.

The most important thing is that we need an honest discussion about what is going on with our fish stocks at sea and within the rivers. The focus is always within the rivers, but unless we have a discussion on a cross-state basis about the sea, we will not get the full answer. We also need an all-island angling organisation. We have Waterways Ireland and Tourism Ireland, but IFI is still a Twenty-six County organisation. The Minister has an understanding of the issues and of the area, and also of the issues that face IFI. I hope he takes that understanding and engages with IFI and pursues it to continue the level of engagement we had here last October. IFI should be available in the same way that Irish Water was when it started up, with meetings a couple of times a year to deal with our queries with the agency, be they around planning, prosecutions, flood management, flood maintenance or the guidance IFI can offer us on our work. This should be addressed regularly. The Minister will find he is pushing an open door. Perhaps it is something that could be done through the Business Committee to ensure it happens. Our rivers are a vital resource. We have a responsibility to protect them and to ensure that when we hand those rivers on, they are still teeming with the kind of fish we were used to as children.

See this speech in context