Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am treating this issue with all the seriousness it deserves. Our rivers are a natural resource and an amenity that we must protect. The Deputy mentioned that telephone calls have been made and videos and photographs have been submitted. I assure him that if there is any failure in terms of communication, it will be rectified. I will bring that issue to the attention of the IFI.

The local IFI inspector has been in regular contact with members of one angling club, namely, the Castletown Angling Club, regarding this matter. The regular contact has been by way of telephone calls to the inspector. There have been calls from anglers for IFI to electro-fish the river to ascertain how many diseased fish were present. However, I am advised this is not a practical measure in the circumstances. Rather the priority is to get the live infected fish for sampling and the local fisheries team had been proactive in developing a plan to fish for salmon on the Castletown river and to try to obtain a live sample of infected fish to provide to the Marine Institute for virology and pathology testing. The team has also set up a holding station isolated from the water body for any infected live fish which are caught.

As already stated, a dedicated email address was set up and the IFI received a number of communications to this address, some of which included photographs. This is a reporting mechanism and it would not be the usual practice to respond individually to reporting emails to a notification type address but rather to concentrate on the intelligence gathered in same. The majority of communications locally appear to have been by telephone. I will be happy to have the IFI liaise directly with the Deputy on this matter . From a personal point of view, the local anglers are the people who have the local knowledge and that is what will help us solve this problem, but it is a worry.

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