Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to respond to this matter, which concerns an area directly dealt with in his brief. The Minister will be very familiar with the River Suir because it rises in the Devil's Bit and flows down through many areas including Thurles, from where his own people originally come. It flows through Tipperary, Kilkenny and on into the Waterford estuary. It is one of the longest rivers in the country.
The Minister is au faitwith the issue I raise. He was with us in Carrick-on-Suir almost 12 months ago and travelled part of the river with us that day. He is very familiar with the river and the fishing situation. In preparing for this Adjournment Debate I want to acknowledge the help I got from staff of Inland Fisheries Ireland, particularly David McInerney in the Clonmel office, for providing me with some background information.

I have previously raised in the House the concern among snap net fishermen who fish out of small boats along the River Suir in places such as Carrick-on-Suir, Fiddown and Mooncoin into the estuary. They are licensed and each licence has 20 tags per year. In other words, a licence holder is permitted to take out 20 salmon. They have been prevented from fishing this year based on evidence provided by Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI. The conservation limits are so low that IFI will not permit snap net fishing for salmon this year.
There are 148 salmon rivers in the country, 25 of which have fish counters on them, 40 are monitored by way of analysis of rod catches while the remaining 83 are subject to a more convoluted and complex system of measurement, which includes salmon red counts and juvenile salmon index counts. I will not go into detail on this but the clearest way to measure the salmon stock in a river is to use a fish counter. Before the Minister of State took up office, there was a botched effort to install a salmon counter on the River Suir west of Carrick-on-Suir. No planning permission was sought for the counter and the project was abandoned. A salmon counter is the only way to guarantee accuracy. For example, changes in the weather and so on can changed the basis of salmon redd counts and juvenile salmon index counts from one year to the next and, therefore, the only way to be accurate is to use salmon counters. However, it is on the basis of the other counts and information that snap net fishermen have been prevented from fishing this year.
I acknowledge that members of the independent standing scientific committee addressed members of the snap net group a number of times earlier this year and explained why they were taking them off the river but this was presented as a fait accompli and no arbitration was available. The fishermen had to accept the position and not fish this year. Such fishing is not a commercially viable enterprise anymore because of the limited numbers but it is a tradition that goes back more than 1,000 years, which has been passed on from family to family along the River Suir. The fishermen are disappointed that they have been prevented from fishing the river this year without proper mechanisms to analyse the fish stocks in place. Rod catches are used to measure stocks but it is forgotten that angling is only permitted for a number of months annually and, therefore, one can only measure the number of fish caught through the use of tags during those months. That system is incomplete and cannot be used as an accurate fish count.
I ask the Minister of State to re-examine this issue for all these reasons and to provide clarity for the fishermen affected in counties Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny.