Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his ongoing commitment to the fishing industry, particularly in light of the last capital plan. There was a very welcome announcement for ports such as Castletownbere. I also welcome his ongoing commitment to providing coastal areas throughout the country with capital support, in conjunction with local authorities, to allow for investment in piers and quays along our coastline.

The landing obligation or ban on discards introduced as a result of the new Common Fisheries Policy under Regulation (EU) No. 1380/2013 is a new departure and one that is necessary in light of much media comment and public concern about the requirement for fishing vessels to discard perfectly good dead fish into our oceans because they do not have a quota for them, they are undersized or whatever. Fishermen are simply not able to land perfectly good fish, and there was a political move to do something about it.

Following several years of negotiations and in the lead-up to the adoption of the Common Fisheries Policy, the landing obligation, or ban on discards, was introduced. It has been introduced in pelagic species in the north-western waters of Ireland, Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Pelagic species such as mackerel, herring, horse mackerel, blue whiting, boar fish, smelt, albacore tuna and sprat already come under the landing obligation.

It is no harm to examine how that has worked within the pelagic sector. There have been some hiccups and it has been difficult for skippers and owners to deal with the system, but in the polyvalent sector, demersal fishing will be the real challenge for the Department, the Commission and the fisheries sector. The demersal species include cod, haddock, whiting, saithe, pollock, Norway lobster, nephrops, common sole, plaice and hake.

The discard ban, or landing obligation, is coming into effect on 1 January 2016. There is major concern within the industry. It is my job, as a public representative who hears about this concern on a daily basis in places such as Castletownbere and Union Hall, to address it. There are real issues facing the industry and individual fishermen in dealing with their landing obligations, which they take seriously.

I recognise that the Minister has established a discard ban implementation committee, led by Dr. Noel Cawley. It would be unfair if I did not mention that there is a lot of confusion or a lack of knowledge about how the committee is operating and reporting and what it is considering. Perhaps the producer organisations are dealing with it more intensively. I have spoken to skippers and fishermen who have told me there is a great lack of knowledge as to how the committee is working. Many issues need to be considered, such as quota lists and logging of discards. There are technical issues such as the selectivity of gear. Smaller vessels which have smaller holds may not have room for their legitimate catches if, rather than discarding non-quota species, they have to bring them in. Fish may be landed on quays that may not be as well serviced as fishery harbour centres. What will happen to such fish? There are questions about what happens to undersized fish that are landed. There are many technical questions and it is only reasonable that they be aired in advance of 1 January 2016. I look forward to the Minister's response and an ongoing debate over the next few weeks and months on this issue.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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One of the key elements of reform of the Common Fisheries Policy is the introduction of a phased ban on the discarding of unwanted fish catches. In June 2013, under the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, a practical and phased discards policy or landing obligation was agreed. The first part of the landing obligation, namely, the ban on the discarding of pelagic stocks such as herring and mackerel, came into effect on 1 January 2015 and will be extended to certain demersal stocks, i.e., white fish and prawns, from 1 January 2016.

The landing obligation will be fully phased in for all quota stocks by 1 January 2019. It is with regard to quota stocks and not non-quota stocks.

The phasing-in period was one of my key demands during the negotiations, to allow fishermen time to adjust and implement changes to avoid unwanted catches. Under the new Common Fisheries Policy, the details of how the landing obligation will apply in particular fisheries, and what, if any, flexibility, for example de minimiswhich would allow some discarding, can be applied are decided upon by regional groups and member states in consultation with stakeholders. Ireland is a member of the north-western waters group, along with Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain. Stakeholders are represented at the north-western waters regional advisory council and the pelagic advisory council. After intense negotiations, it was agreed in June of this year that from 1 January 2016 for the north-western waters the ban on discarding will apply to the prawn, or nephrops, fishery in all waters, the whiting fishery in the Celtic Sea, the haddock fishery in the Irish Sea and the north-west area, the hake fishery in all areas and the sole fishery in the Celtic Sea. The other stocks will be phased in over the following three years. Nobody is asking anybody to do anything massive in one year. This will be done piece by piece and bit by bit. We can see the difficulties as they emerge and we can try to solve them. That is what this is about.

The vessels which will be subject to the landing obligation in 2016 are being identified on the basis of a combination of gear type and historic landing data. For example, a vessel that had more than 25% of cod, haddock, whiting and saithe combined in its landings from the Celtic Sea in 2013 and 2014 will be obliged to land all the whiting it catches in the Celtic Sea next year.

This is a big ask for the industry. This is a big change to the Common Fisheries Policy but let us be clear that up to 40% of the adult and juvenile fish caught under the Common Fisheries Policy since it was last reformed, and before that, has been dumped into the sea dead. The idea that this is okay, because it is difficult to manage an alternative to simply dump what is estimated to be 400,000 tonnes of fish, needed to change. This is equivalent in weight to all of the beef we export from this country, and we are the biggest exporter of beef by far in the European Union. The Irish Government is now going to change it, and we will move away from what is called a landed quota for fishermen. At present, if fishermen have a quota of five tonnes and they catch eight tonnes, they need to dump three tonnes into the sea. Instead, they will have a catch quota, which will provide challenges for fishermen and we will help them through this.

We have the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, EMFF, which is double anything we ever had before for the fishing sector. It is a significant amount of money to spend on the fishing industry to help it adapt to the transformation we need to fund over the coming years. We have started with pelagic fish and it has worked. We are now moving to some demersal stocks for next year, those we believe we can implement most easily, and we will learn as we go along and help fishermen adapt. There are flexibilities we can use and obviously there will be tolerance when it is introduced on 1 January. This change must be made, and let us be absolutely clear about this. It will be done and it must be done. The producer organisations and fishermen, by and large, have been working with us to try to ensure it works in a practical way.

I have been in Castletownbere, where we held a meeting specifically on this on the quayside, answering questions for approximately an hour and a half. Dr. Noel Cawley has a job to do to make sure communication continues until and after 1 January to ensure the implementation of the new policy, which is about creating healthier fish stocks so there is more fish for everybody to catch. The win for fishermen is that moving from a landed quota to a catch quota means they should get a quota uplift when we negotiate quotas in December. This means we should, hopefully, get access to catching more prawns than we would otherwise have been able to catch because we will not be dumping any over the side. We must factor in this, with regard to everything that will be landed in the future. There is an upside for the fishing industry. There is an immediate upside in quota uplift, which needs to be negotiated on the basis of science, and, of course, there is a medium to long-term significant uplift in terms of the health of the stocks. This can be a good news story but together we will have to learn to adapt and change how we fish. I am certainly up for this in terms of the support programmes we will put in place.

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I very much welcome the Minister's response. We are not trying to unwind the landing obligation or the discard ban. It is difficult, but there is no turning back and this is the reality which must be dealt with. Throwing fish back is abhorrent to fishermen; what they do is catch fish. They are not there to throw them back and they do not want to throw them back. They would wish to have a mechanism whereby they do not have to do this, and this is it.

The point I am making is there are real difficulties as envisaged by fishermen, particularly in the demersal sector. If one has a whiting quota but not a haddock quota, it is very difficult to segregate the species. I accept the Minister's response. It is a new departure for everyone, including the Department, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, and the fishing sector. The reason I am raising this on the floor of the Dáil is, exactly as the Minister said, that phasing it in is the correct way to do it. There will be hurdles to cross between now and 1 January, and over the coming year or two. I am pleased the Minister has said the Department will be accommodating in every way it can to help the sector and I urge that this is so. Getting to maximum sustainable yield in fisheries is the right policy. Without fish there is no fishing industry, and I and the sector fully agree with this. It will take some difficult decisions and new management processes to deal with this.

The feeling on the ground is one of uncertainty and doubt because, as the Minister recognises, the demersal sector is not the jewel of the crown of the fishing industry. It has had difficult times. One could argue the fleet is at overcapacity. The quota we have is simply not viable for many of the vessels, which are small. On top of this, the issue of dealing with landing obligation is creating real doubt and concern in much of the demersal sector and for this reason it is only fair to bring it before the House. I accept and I hope the Department, Dr. Noel Cawley's implementation group and the industry will come together to find real solutions to the obstacles which lay ahead. This is the right thing to do but it is very difficult, and this needs to be recognised in full by all stakeholders.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The place to start is to inform people about what is being asked of them because there is major confusion. We have been trying to do so. I have been to Castletownbere and we spent quite a bit of time with the fishing industry specifically on this issue. I have also been to Kilmore Quay, where I took questions for two and a half hours from fishermen on this issue. It is the responsibility of Dr. Noel Cawley's group to have these town hall meetings and very practical discussions about what is being asked and what is not being asked. No one is asking a fisherman to bring in starfish and land it on the quayside. They can discard them. In terms of quota species, we will introduce stocks to the quota over a period of time, as we learn to be more targeted and accommodate through the management tools we have a negotiated in the Common Fisheries Policy a way in which we catch what we land as opposed to catching a lot of fish which we do not have the capacity to land because we do not have the quota for them. We have had some success in this, particularly with regard to juvenile fish.

If we consider the change in mesh size and net design in the Celtic Sea, for example, we have reduced dramatically the number of juvenile fish being caught in that fishery. We can learn from that. Likewise, there has been much experimentation in the Irish Sea and other prawn fisheries with the aim of avoiding catching cod. We need to encourage fishermen to do that.

We have a package that is worth €241 million with the new European Marine and Fisheries Fund, EMFF. That is more than twice any other package that has ever been negotiated for the Irish fishing industry. We have that so we can facilitate, support and finance the change programme required over the next few years. I appeal to fishermen not to see this as a threat but rather as an opportunity that requires them to look differently at their management systems and how they fish. Sometimes when people are challenged and a bit confused about what is being asked of them, the response is one of resistance because they think there is an ulterior motive. There is no such motive in this case as this is about trying to create healthier, bigger stocks of fish at sea in order that we can catch more fish. It is also about ensuring we are using the science, innovation and technology we have available to be more targeted in our fishing.

It is complicated when we speak about a mixed fishery, with different quotas applying to different stocks all being caught in the same net. That is the particular difficulty we will have to face. In the Celtic Sea, which is arguably the most complex fishery around the Irish coast, we are starting with the easiest of the three in the cod, haddock and whiting fishery, namely, whiting, and we will see how that works. We will co-operate with fisherman to ensure it works and we will extend the process to other species year on year. Nothing is being rushed and this will happen in a phased way between now and 2019. There is much money to help us get there with respect to changed management systems and gear that is required but it would be disastrous for the fishing industry to think we can resist this because it is new and we do not like it. To be fair, the people involved will not take that route. Let us work together on this so that in five or six years we will have healthier stocks and more profitable fishing, which ultimately is what this is about.