Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Early last week, concern was expressed regarding two fishing vessels that were in difficulty off the west coast. One of them was an Irish vessel and the other was a Russian trawler. What was most striking was when it became apparent that the Russian vessel, described as a trawler, had a crew of 91 on board meaning that, effectively, it was a factory ship. Over the weekend, a number of fishermen drew my attention to the marine traffic with the tracking of these trawlers fishing off the coast. Approximately 57 factory ships work west of County Galway and of Loop Head in County Clare in the vicinity of the Porcupine Bank. Their daily take would vary between 200 tonnes and 400 tonnes of blue whiting. On a good day, they would have 14,800 tonnes if they caught the maximum number of fish for the day. The consequences of that primarily for fish stocks and ultimately for the environment are drastic. I am informed that there is no policing of it in that there is nobody on board to determine if they are declaring what they are catching and whether they are caught within or outside European or Irish waters.

Obviously, this leads to many difficulties for the Irish fishing fleet. Before commenting further, I commend the Minister on his decision to exclude vessels of or greater than 18 m in length from fishing within 6 nautical miles of the Irish shore. That was a very positive step to take. However, many fishing vessels are short of quota or have no quota. These would have an historical track record but maybe not updated such that they would qualify for it.

I have been told that Norway has done a deal with the EU under which Norwegian factory ships have access to European waters. It is my understanding that it has negotiated for 250,000 tonnes of blue whiting and the trade-off for that works out at around 30 tonnes of cod for the Irish fishing fleet.

The SFPA will claim that it is monitoring the situation but how can it monitor factory ships that are working at between 150 and 200 miles off the coast? Staff of the SFPA are sitting in an office in Clonakilty, watching the sea on television. That is effectively the only monitoring I know about.

Factory ships are seriously detrimental to fish stocks, particularly in the context of 14,800 tonnes of whiting being taken from the sea per day. This needs to be investigated. I have suggested in the past that the large boats working within Irish and European territorial waters should have a member of the SFPA on board permanently to monitor them properly. If that is not done, and I see that the Minister is smiling at me now-----

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