Dáil debates

Thursday, 1 February 2018

Island Fisheries (Heritage Licence) Bill 2017: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

2:50 pm

Photo of Andrew DoyleAndrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will continue.

The direct, practical nature of the projects the FLAGs support is impressive and innovative. They include projects such as storage facilities for fishermen, which improve working conditions at harbours and piers, and the promotion of seafood through integration with tourism and community events.

Island fishermen and other inshore fishermen can, of course, avail of a range of other schemes, such as the dedicated inshore fisheries conservation scheme with its own €6 million allocation. This scheme funds the popular lobster V-notching programme, providing direct support to fishermen for engaging in the practice of demarking lobsters for conservation and putting them back to sea to support long-term healthy stocks.

I note a particular focus of the Bill is small-scale coastal fishing, which is fishing by vessels of less than 12 m overall length with non-towed gear. This is a feature of fishing in many of the ports and harbours around our coast, not just the offshore islands. Small-scale coastal fishing is a commercial activity from which a livelihood is derived. Under the programme, most of the grants available to small-scale coastal fishermen apply at a rate of 80% of the cost of the investment.

Small-scale coastal fishermen are already using Ireland's EMFF programme to invest at very low cost in selective fishing gear, to purchase a wide variety of essential on-board equipment and on-land equipment, such as ice machines and freezers to preserve and add value to catch, or indeed to purchase their first fishing vessel. To date, over 50% of all payments from the sustainable fisheries scheme have been to small-scale coastal fishermen. Bord lascaigh Mhara is using the resources of the EMFF programme to provide technical and business advisory services to small-scale coastal fishermen and to assist this important part of Ireland's fishing fleet in the development of fishery management plans and environmental requirements.

One of the responsibilities held by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine is overseeing Ireland's role in the Common Fisheries Policy. The CFP is a set of rules for managing European fishing fleets and for conserving fish stocks. Designed to manage a common resource, fisheries management is based on data and scientific advice, and control measures to ensure that rules are applied fairly and complied with by all fishermen. A key component of CFP rules is the requirement for a stable and enduring balance between the fishing capacity and the fishing opportunities of each member state. In this regard the rules lay down requirements for each member state to license every commercial sea-fishing boat in its fishing fleet. These requirements are legally binding on every member state and are set out in EU regulations.

This Bill before us proposes to create a system of licences for individual island fishermen. However, it cannot be divorced from the requirement to license each sea-fishing boat. Therefore, all the Bill could hope to achieve is to put island fishermen in the uniquely bureaucratic situation of needing a personal licence and a sea-fishing boat licence. Entry to and exit from Ireland's fishing fleet is managed through the capacity of each vessel wishing to be registered as an Irish sea-fishing boat with the independent Registrar General of Fishing Boats.

Capacity in the form of gross tonnage and engine power has become a privately owned tradeable asset which, with certain exceptions, may be sold, traded or realised as a financial asset on the tonnage market. I stress it is not an asset owned by the Department or the Licensing Authority for Sea-fishing Boats. We must be clear here what we are talking about. Capacity is a privately owned asset by which fishing boat owners can exercise rights to fish on a commercial basis - rights to earn their livelihood.

The existing licensing system for sea-fishing boats is administered by the Licensing Authority for Sea-fishing Boats on an independent basis subject to criteria set out in legislation and ministerial policy directives. The Minister is legally precluded under section 3(5) of the Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2003 from exercising any power or control in individual cases, or a group of cases, with which the licensing authority is or may be concerned. Licences issued by the licensing authority are issued to the owners of sea-fishing boats to license the vessel concerned. The owner may be an individual, a partnership or a corporate body, including a co-operative. An independent appeals system is available to anyone dissatisfied with a decision of the licensing authority.

It is important to point out that the existing licensing legislation and procedures are available to and apply to islanders engaged in commercial sea-fishing. Island fishermen therefore already have access to a licensing regime which recognises their commercial sea-fishing activities, their right to earn a living from the sea, on the same basis as others in the fishing industry.

There are further complexities in how the Irish sea-fishing fleet is managed, including licensing conditions and segmentation. I do not propose to take up the time of the House going into such details. Suffice it to say that there are restrictions on the nature of stocks which may be caught, the fishing gear which may be used and the areas in which fishing may be undertaken.

This Bill, as I read it, proposes to confer a responsibility on the Minister to issue licences to any person either habitually or ordinarily resident on offshore islands to engage in fishing in a narrowly defined way. The Bill does not set out how residency would be determined, nor is it clear how the proposed application process would deal with applications by corporate bodies such as co-operatives and partnerships which come under the legal term "person". I am concerned that the Bill would, if enacted, be open to exploitation by those with very little fishing heritage or island connections.

The Bill does not define what is meant by the term "offshore islands" and seems to presume that islands have a six-mile territorial limit. Many islands around the coastline are contained within the baselines of the territorial seas of the State. These include the Blasket Islands, the Aran Islands, Inishbofin, Clare Island off Mayo and Arranmore Island off Donegal.

The Bill sets out an intention to create a "non-transferable community island quota". It is long-standing Government policy that Ireland's fish quotas are a national asset. Ireland's fish quota management system is designed to ensure the best possible spread among fishing vessel operators and also in terms of uptake of quota throughout the year having regard to fishing patterns and market conditions. Quotas for species which can be obtained using small-scale coastal fishing gear, such as mackerel and herring, already have set-aside allocations for the inshore fishing sector. Key inshore stocks are not limited by quota arrangements, for instance, lobster and crab species which are the mainstay for many small boats. I believe Deputy Kenny had this in mind when he referred to artisan fishing.

The Bill provides no means of review, repeal, surrender or withdrawal of a licence and provides for no sanctions, offences or enforcement powers to oversee the proposed licensing regime. These deficiencies demonstrate that the Bill is not fit to address the concerns of island fishermen or any other community dependent on fishing.

The Government has made conscious strides to create more inclusive and responsive policies to support and develop communities which are reliant on fishing and seafood production for valuable incomes. The Government introduced the fishers tax credit in budget 2016 recognising the difficult nature of working in the fishing sector. I believe this also featured as a recommendation from the committee's report.

When I was Chair of the Oireachtas Sub-Committee on Fisheries, it was evident that no representative body was specifically focused on the inshore sector and the needs of its communities. The Government moved to address this long-standing challenge by creating the inshore fisheries forums to give inshore fishing communities an effective say in policymaking. The national inshore fisheries forum, supported by its base of six regional forums, has given the inshore fishing sector its first dedicated platform to provide meaningful input into decisions, such as access to Ireland's fishing quotas, use of funds from the EMFF and conservation measures for inshore stocks, all of which affect how the sector can operate.

I understand that island fishermen have representatives on four of the six regional inshore fisheries forums and also on the national inshore fisheries forum, which the Minister, Deputy Creed, regularly meets. I am, of course, not surprised that island fishermen and their communities have recognised the opportunities being involved in this process bring and how they can contribute to a better long-term future for their sector.

The Government is committed to supporting coastal and rural communities, including through the provision of direct financial supports.

Ireland's EMFF operational programme is focused on the development of the seafood sector and is a critical part of our commitment and I urge all small-scale coastal fishermen on offshore islands and otherwise to avail of the supports in the programme. I stress that the existing legislation in this area provides an independent licensing process for sea-fishing boats and contributes to managing Ireland's fishing fleet within EU rules. The existing legislation and procedures are available to and apply to islanders already. This Bill would conflict with existing legislation and procedures and would create more restrictive licences for islanders than are currently available to them. That is why the Government, unfortunately, cannot support this Bill.

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