Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this matter, which emanates from a commitment in the programme for Government to designate certain lakes the Senator has named as Corrib, Mask, Arrow, Carra, Conn, Cullin and Sheelin, as salmonoid waters. The initial approach to delivering on this was to put in place a bye-law to address the designation. The inland fisheries division of the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications progressed a comprehensive draft bye-law within the established legislative processes during the first half of 2021. Later in 2021, during the public consultation process on the draft designated salmonid waters bye-law covering the seven distinct lakes, a very broad range of diverse, and often significantly divergent, views were submitted to the Department.

The Minister is acutely aware of the threat to these waters from a range of factors such as infrastructural developments, intensive agricultural practices, water quality, climate change, invasive organisms, and degraded habitats due to arterial drainage. Established programmes, managed by Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI, and its predecessors, have been in place on these State-owned waters since the 1950s. I emphasise that the lakes in question have long been designated for management primarily for the benefit of wild brown trout as a matter of policy and that this policy designation remains. However, the Minister is conscious of the need to address the full range of issues facing fish and aquatic animals and their habitat.

On foot of feedback from the consultation, it was clear that reaching broad stakeholder consensus on a bye-law would be extremely challenging. Based on this feedback and on the advice of IFI, the proposed bye-law is not being pursued. Instead, following detailed discussions between departmental officials and senior management of IFI, the Minister formally asked IFI to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based management plan for these waters to be known as the western lakes management plan. The Senator was briefed extensively on these developments and the strategy to discontinue the proposed bye-law in favour of pursuing the policy goal via a comprehensive management plan. He will no doubt be aware of the Minister's intention to have IFI develop that plan.

IFI submitted its first iteration of the plan to the inland fisheries division in mid-October 2020 and, following detailed joint consideration, a second refined version was delivered last week. It is expected that the draft plan will be submitted to the Minister for his consideration shortly in response to his formal request for the plan. It is also intended that the draft plan will be provided to the Angling Consultative Council of Ireland, which is the group, open to all national angling representation organisations, established by the Minister for consultation on angling matters. In addition, broad stakeholder consultation will be undertaken across all disciplines of angling and with environmental and biodiversity stakeholders and other affected and interested parties.

In the context of these developments, certain stakeholders have raised, mainly by means of requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2014, the matter of the two bye-laws cited by the Senator in this matter. In the interests of clarity, those making freedom of information requests were advised by the Department that, following a search of available files from 2006, no records within the scope of the requests were located. This may indicate that the Department concluded that the bye-laws did not come within the scope of the directive and that, as such, an appropriate assessment or even an appropriate assessment screening was not necessary. It should be noted that the bye-laws in question have been in force for 16 years and, while fisheries legislation provides for an appeal of any bye-law to the High Court within 30 days of its enactment, no such contemporaneous appeal was entered in either case.

It is also important to note that the carrying out of appropriate assessments or screening assessments or the initiation of assessment processes on more recent regulations or bye-laws does not imply that the Department considers bye-laws Nos. 809 or 806 of 2006 to be non-compliant with the habitats directive.These issues would have to be considered as regards the specific bye-laws and the matter of compliance with the EU habitats directive within the perspective of relevant EU case law. In addition, it may not be feasible to review bye-laws from 16 years ago without reviewing all bye-laws currently in force.

Legislative change required, if any, can be considered in the context of the Inland Fisheries Ireland western lakes management plan. The future application of bye-laws Nos. 806 and 809 of 2006 to the western lakes will, therefore, also be informed by the implementation of Inland Fisheries Ireland's forthcoming western lakes management plan.