Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The experience of anglers, certainly those in the north east, has not been as the Minister of State describes in terms of IFI being proactive. He mentioned the River Boyne but, to my knowledge, that has not been the experience of anglers with respect to the other rivers I mentioned. Anglers have been asked to deal with the issue but the IFI has trained staff. It would have been expected its staff should have either netted the river or extracted live samples using electro-stunning, of which I am sure the Minister of State is aware.

I wish to place on record the fact that, as far back as 25 June, emails containing photographs were sent to local inspectors and that the replies received indicated that no formal action was being taken by IFI, which was trying to capture diseased fish in Galway nearer to its testing laboratory. Other emails were sent on 9 and 12 July and on 5 and 19 August containing photographs of diseased fish. On 13 Sept, a video was sent to the local IFI inspector showing diseased fish in the Castletown river.

I ask that priority be given to what is considered to be an environmental disaster in the rivers to which I referred. Effectively, no fish are to be found in them or those that found in them give rise to serious concern with respect to this disease. The Minister of State has not confirmed whether the disease found in the fish is ulcerative dermal necrosis. From what I have read, that it what it appears to be. However, I am not a scientist. More importantly, we need to get to the bottom of the matter. If the Minister of State checks the record of these disease trends, I am advised that disease almost wiped out the stock in 1877. He referred to the period from 1960s through to the 1990s. This issue will become much more serious if we do not address it immediately.

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