Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for his permission to raise this matter. This eel business has been shamefully handled from the very beginning. Without any consultation of depth, a group of officials decided that they would obey the call contained in a European directive that sought a 40% reduction in eel fishing. They decided they would offer 100%. Let us imagine getting a directive from Europe, which one decides not alone to obey but to more than double the provisions. Their decision, in effect, was to kill off the eel fishing industry.

I am acutely disappointed, not at the presence of the Minister of State, Deputy Áine Brady, who is a delight to deal with and meet at any stage. My words of a castigatory nature are not against her good self. I know the Minister of State is aware of that. My disappointment is due to the fact that the Minister, Deputy Ryan, who voted in the Chamber tonight, did not see fit to explain why he had allowed this shameful neglect, this utterly shameful, despicable action by him and his officials.

When I drew the matter to his attention one evening he replied that only a few people in short-term jobs were affected. In the acute economic disarray in which we find ourselves, those jobs are the only economic mainstay of many a family in this country. There is a significant number of eel fishermen in the midlands. Eel fishing rights have been passed down from grandfather to father to son. There is to be no compensation. Their rights were wiped out overnight with absolutely no compensation yet nobody is creating a fuss. Nobody is worked up about it. Why is that the case? It is the case simply because they think they will get away with it. Then we wonder why people did not support the referendum on the Lisbon treaty. One of the main reasons was to do with turbary rights, about which at least the Minister, Deputy Gormley, has seen sense and some turf cutters have regained their rights. The rights of people handed down through generations to fish for eels in their designated waterway has been shamelessly whipped away from them with no academic or research study to back this up.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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The Deputy must conclude.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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It is important to note that there was no proper research or consultation and that there is no compensation of any kind.

If this Parliament is to mean anything it is that we stand for the rights of people. I noted the various Deputies who put forward their cases on the Adjournment tonight. Each of them spoke on the basis of a strong mandate. I speak on this issue from a strong mandate also. I am determined to show up the shameful actions or-----

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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The Deputy should conclude please.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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-----non-action of a particular Green Party Minister. I am delighted that Deputy Mary White, the vice president or vice chairman-----

Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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Deputy leader.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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-----I am sorry - deputy leader of her party, is present. Deputy leader is better again. I hope she-----

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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The Deputy must conclude please.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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-----will use her formidable clout to administer a clout where it is needed. The Members present may laugh. How innocent it is that we all laugh while people's livelihoods are lost.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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The Deputy is two minutes over her time.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I am amazed that the Green Party, which stands for all things bright and pure, is responsible for this action. I hope the sun continues to shine on the Minister, Deputy Ryan-----

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I call Deputy White.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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-----but I doubt it.

Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I am delighted to share my time with Deputy O'Rourke.

Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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It was my time first.

Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy very much. I hope the Acting Chairman will allow me the extra few minutes.

I have a long interest in eel fishing through family members and the Barrow catchment where I live. I know a huge number of eel fishermen who have lived for generations in small lock houses along the Barrow who catch a few eels. They catch brown eels in the summer in fyke nets and silver eels in winter in the first floods. The most amazing scene in County Carlow or County Kilkenny where I had the privilege to be elected is to see those eels in the first big floods of autumn slithering across our fields into small streams to reach the major catchments on their voyage to the Sargasso Sea.

The approach to the eel ban is fundamentally flawed. We could have an eel ban forever in this country and it would not solve the problem because the problem is outside of Irish waters. We need a Europe-wide study on what is happening to the elvers. They are the small glass eels that have not yet reached maturity. They come back into our rivers and streams to breed and then travel back down the rivers in the autumn to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. They are not there anymore, yet they are being sold in vacuum packs in the French and Spanish markets and are being caught by the Japanese and the Chinese. In spite of that we are imposing a total ban in this country without looking at the cause and the effect.

I am disappointed that we did not get the scientific evidence or have a proper consultation process with the eel fishermen. I would have liked the senior Minister and the Ministers of State to meet with the eel fishermen to discuss the proposed ban. Let us consider what is happening in Holland where the Government is investing €1 million to help progress an eel fishery. The intention is to release the silver eels into the sea and then invest a further €300,000 to buy elvers to put into the catchments in the hope that they will escape through the rivers and back into the sea. What we are doing in this country is fundamentally flawed and flies in the face of scientific reason.

If we are to take ourselves seriously and act on directives from the European Union we must have the scientific evidence to back up such a ban. It is a knee-jerk reaction and I hope we can have consultation and above all, compensation, for the approximately 500 fishermen affected. On my own catchment there are fewer than 50 fishermen. Eel fishing is a long tradition and eel fishermen are conservationists. I am a conservationist and I am a member of a conservationist party but what we have done in terms of the eel ban flies in the face of scientific interest. I look forward to a reversal of the decision at the soonest possible opportunity in order to protect the eel, implement conservation measures and to protect the incomes of eel fishermen. We will not do it alone, we need all of our 27 European Union partners to come together to find out why the elvers are not returning. The problem is not in the Irish waters, it is outside of it and that is where we must begin our research.

Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputies O'Rourke and White for raising this important issue and for their wonderful contributions. I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Ryan.

Earlier this decade, scientific research conducted by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ICES, indicated that the European eel stock is now outside safe biological limits. It advised that a recovery plan be developed for the whole stock of European eel as a matter of urgency and that exploitation and other human activities affecting the stock be reduced to as close to zero as possible. The EU brought forward a Council regulation to establish a new framework for the recovery and sustainable use of the stock of European eel.

As required under the regulation, Ireland submitted a Government approved draft eel management plan to the Commission for approval earlier this year. Given the perilous state of eel stocks in Ireland, as demonstrated in the assessment contained in the plan, and consideration by management of other factors, such as protection costs, the implementation of the data collection regulation and the eel regulation's traceability requirements, four main management actions aimed at reducing eel mortality and increasing silver eel escapement in Irish waters were identified. Those are a cessation of the commercial eel fishery and closure of the market, ensuring upstream migration of juvenile eel at barriers, the improvement of water quality in eel habitats, and the mitigation of the impact of hydropower, including the introduction by the ESB of a comprehensive silver eel trap and transport plan on the Shannon and Erne rivers.

The Irish eel fishery harvested approximately 100 tonnes per annum and there are up to 150 fishermen who held a maximum of 296 licences, not all of which were actively fished. Catches have been declining over recent years because of the status of stocks. Eel fishing is not a full-time occupation and is restricted to certain months of the year.

Last week the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources signed by-laws to give effect to the national eel management plan put in place to protect our dwindling eel stocks. The by-laws closed the commercial and recreational eel fishery until June 2012. The decision to cease the eel fishery was taken to support a recovery of the stock in the shortest time possible.

Under the regulation, all aspects of the plan must be reviewed in 2012. This review will consider whether the eel fishery and market could be reopened in any river basin district in light of the data gathered in the interim and the performance of stocks. At that stage, the by-laws will be reviewed. However, when the last 20 years of poor recruitment of juvenile eels is taken into account, it is likely that the adult eel stock in Irish waters will continue to decline for at least the next decade.

The ESB, as part of its implementation of the eel plan, will advertise for tenders next week to undertake trap and transport operations. Ambitious targets have been set within the plan, including the transport of at least 40 tonnes of eel around the turbines at Ardnacrusha and Ballyshannon. The Minister is also alert to the concerns and the impact the necessary conservation measures will have on commercial eel fishermen. Experienced eel fishermen would be in a very strong position to tender competitively for the provision of the trap and transport operations for ESB. The Minister encourages them in their efforts to form the appropriate co-operatives or other ventures to best compete for these contracts. There will also be a limited amount of fishing associated with the research and monitoring to be carried out under the plan. This will be in the region of 150 man days spread over seven water bodies.

The low recruitment of juvenile eels in 2009 appears to be the worst yet and gives rise to serious concern for the future of the eel. We owe it to future generations to do whatever we can to save this vulnerable species, not only for its own sake but also to protect ecological biodiversity. To do otherwise would consign our remaining stock, challenged by so many pressures from ocean changes due to global warming to habitat degradation to parasites and disease to possible extinction.