Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This Government has prioritised agriculture in its budgets in a way we have not seen for many years. In each Budget Statement he has delivered, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, has referred directly to agriculture and farming at the very outset. The evidence of our commitment is there to see in the growth of the sector. Problems remain and we will continue to deal with them as they arise. Arising from our discussions in the beef forum later this afternoon, I am hopeful we will be able to deal with the problems farmers are facing in the beef sector.

I will not comment on any single application for which I have a statutory responsibility in terms of licensing determination. All I will say is that I will not grant any license that is not legally and environmentally sound and does not have all of the necessary science and data attached to it. The Galway Bay project is no different from any other in that regard. Anybody who claims I have somehow allowed projects through without significant scrutiny understands neither the process nor my record. In fact, I have not granted a single salmon-farming project licence in the three and a half years I am in office. I want to see a sustainable aquaculture industry in Ireland which encompasses both finfish farming and shellfish farming. We have a phenomenal resource around our coastline but it needs to be looked after from an environmental perspective, which requires a strict licensing and monitoring regime. That is being done and will continue to be done under my stewardship.

Senator Aideen Hayden spoke about marine safety, an issue that is close to my heart. We have done a great deal of work in this area in recent years, including on the personal location device initiative to which she referred. This was a joint initiative launched between my Department and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport at Union Hall under my stewardship and that of the then Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar. A major part of it involves the promotion of the use of life-jackets, with a significant grant aid package for personal locational devices linked into that. Ultimately, there must be self-regulation for fishermen. We are not going to have inspectors on board fishing boats every day. Fishermen, like farmers, live lives where they must self-regulate to a significant extent.

They are out at sea day and night and most of the time nobody is watching them. The attitude to safety must change in the fisheries industry and life jackets must be worn. We are pushing hard on that and we are approaching the conclusion of a new set of fishing safety recommendations that is being led by Mr. John Leech. Mr. Leech chaired the effort and will report to me in the next fortnight.

I hope I have answered the questions on tonnage and landing issues as we would like to see increases in these areas. On fish labelling, BIM and Bord Bia have been pushing a new "responsible Irish fish" label. On supermarket shelves the "responsible Irish fish" assurance label can be seen, as one sees such labels on beef. We would like to see this labelling spread through the industry as it says that the fish in question was caught responsibly, processed appropriately and is not an endangered species.

I was asked questions about rebalancing the pelagic sector around quota allocation and there has been much of this in the past five to ten years. The pelagic sector has received an increased share that is now at 13% and last year more than 13,000 tonnes of pelagic mackerel were caught by the polyvalent sector. Significant investment has been made in bigger boats as the cost of entering the sector is sizable and this cannot be changed overnight. People have invested heavily on the back of business plans and have expectations in terms of access to fish so this cannot be reversed overnight. This issue will be reconsidered but I can address only one matter at a time. When quota allocations are reassessed all stakeholders are involved in the process and there will be an active debate if this happens in the future as everyone wants a higher quota.

The European Commission and most countries pushed for the effective privatisation of quota during negotiations on the Common Fisheries Policy to allow the big players buy up quota from everyone else over time but we successfully resisted this. We were on our own in this resistance because the Irish quota is a national asset that is allocated to the industry as we see fit, in the best interests of the industry and coastal communities. That is how things will stay under this Government.

Regarding the deal involving Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and the EU, mackerel stocks have been growing and moving north into Icelandic and Faroese waters. My views on the deal done by the European Commission are well known and I think I was the only Minister to vote against it. I did not do so because the mackerel quota available to the Irish industry this year has fallen because it has not, it has increased significantly. However, the overall share of mackerel stock in north-western waters to which Ireland has access has decreased in percentage terms and this is not a good precedent. Do not forget, this deal will last only a couple of years and will have to be redone. In effect, the industry in Ireland will have access to more mackerel than last year and I do not see this collapsing next year. After that we will have to renegotiate a new deal between Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and the EU. My record on these negotiations speaks for itself.

On large Dutch factory freezer vessels, a public example of this arose in Killybegs some month ago. It was part of an enforcement inspection procedure but if such boats have a quota to catch, which they do, they cannot be expelled from Irish or European waters. There are many different types of fishing vessels in European fleets. Very large freezer vessels have access to very large quotas and such vessels would buy most of the Irish quota, if it were privatised, as was the Commission's original plan. We will not allow such privatisation and will enforce the rules with such vessels as best we can, as we do with all vessels in Irish waters. Those vessels will have to comply with new regulations under the Common Fisheries Policy, like all vessels, on discarding, ending the practice of grading fish, which has been a huge issue for large factory vessels, and so on.

On meeting community groups and so on, I am a fairly open Minister and I meet most groups that want to see me. However, I am also a busy Minister so we set up regional fisheries forums so groups could have a say collectively on deciding what different regions in Ireland prioritise within the inshore fishing fleet. Via the National Inshore Fisheries Forum, those groups engage directly with me and my Department to get the outcomes they seek. I cannot meet everyone but I will try to meet as many people as possible to get different perspectives.

Senator Michael Comiskey pointed to the big challenge this December. We need to start the implementation of the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, which is challenging in itself, and we need to bring the industry with us. That is why this winter I will emphasise strongly that we take account of economic concerns in fishing communities, in addition to pure science. The new Common Fisheries Policy allows for this and it will be necessary to create the goodwill necessary for the other fundamental changes.

I know Senator O'Donovan's territory in west Cork very well and appreciate the fishing interests there. I also pay tribute to Mr. Joe Walsh, who I knew personally. I worked with him on a series of projects, particularly in the area of horse racing and the sports horse sector. I paid a short tribute to him earlier in the Dáil as I felt it was appropriate to do so while answering questions on agriculture. I think he was the longest serving Minister with that portfolio that Ireland ever had and his family can be proud of his contribution to public life.

On the implementation of the ban on discards, we are starting with the pelagic sector in January 2015. We will then examine the whitefish sector in 12 months and continue species by species. This is a graded process of introducing an obligation to land species by species and the aim is to complete it by 2020. This is a manageable timetable but it is challenging. We have money to spend to help the industry adapt to new realities and it is in the interests of the industry to do this because it will build stocks. The idea of catching and dumping dead juvenile fish, small fish and fish we do not have a quota to catch is not in anyone's interests. Such fish could be caught next year as a commercial catch to be landed and sold. This is the goal of the discards ban - we are switching from a quota for the amount of fish fishermen can land to a quota for the amount they can catch. There is a big difference because at the moment one can land a certain tonnage and if one catches more one dumps the surplus over the side. In future one will receive a quota for what one can actually catch and we must help the fishing industry to adapt by using new technology, fishing methods, mesh sizes, net designs and so on to target fish. This will apply even to mixed fisheries, in terms of how we catch fish, to ensure the fish we catch can be landed, marketed and sold. If we catch excess fish there is flexibility in the new Common Fisheries Policy to facilitate this - fishermen can carry a portion of a quota from one year into the next and can also have inter-species quota management. This is necessary because in some mixed fisheries it will be impossible, even with all of the technology available, to improve the targeting of fish. Fishermen will catch some fish for which they have no quota. The cod, haddock and whiting fishery in the Celtic Sea is a good example of this but it does not mean we should not try.

I want to ensure that we still have an industry in ten, 15 or 20 years time that is bigger than it is now, so that the small guys have something to catch. I hope that will be my record. The challenge of introducing a more sustainable and more science-based fishery is about the future of Irish fishing, to make sure that we do not overfish to the extent that we destroy stocks that will not come back in the future. In my view, that is the best way I can look after every stakeholder and interest in the seafood and fisheries industry. While we make those changes, we need to keep people in business, and that is what the European maritime and fisheries fund will primarily be used for while I am making decisions in this Department.

On the sea-fisheries Bill, which I have promised in this House before, I hope we will introduce and pass that between Christmas and next Easter, so in the first quarter of next year.