Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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Question 78: To ask the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources the progress made with the European Union in establishing new recording mechanisms for fishing boats operating under the common fisheries policy to ensure that there is instantaneous electronic recording of all catches and landings. [38789/06]

Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)
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There is great need to make full use of communications technologies in the monitoring and control of fishing activity. Over the past two years, the Department and the Naval Service have developed new information management systems in the fisheries area which are proving effective in the monitoring, recording, analysis and reporting of fishing activities.

An example is the installation of a Vessel Monitoring System on every vessel over 15m that facilitates the tracking and monitoring of vessels fishing in EU waters, including Ireland's Exclusive Fisheries Zone.

Along with Minister Browne, I have strongly pushed for the use of new technologies that would strengthen Ireland's capabilities to monitor and control fishing activity, including giving the Naval Service access to catch levels of vessels in advance of boardings. In this regard, Ireland has been at the forefront in pushing for the introduction of electronic logbooks and have worked closely with the EU Commission on the early adoption of their proposal.

The proposal for an EU Council Regulation on Electronic Recording and Reporting of fishing activities and on means of remote sensing is on the agenda for decision at the Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels today, which my colleague — Minister of State John Browne — is attending. This Regulation has two main aims:

1. To oblige fishing vessels to record and submit their logbooks, transhipment declaration or their landing declarations electronically, at least once a day. The first sales notes should also be electronically recorded;

2. To require Member States to be able to monitor and locate their vessels and match this with their VMS system in order to assess the presence of fishing vessels in a particular area.

Minister Browne will be pushing for the adoption of this Regulation at today's Council, which we believe will deliver efficiencies for our control services. It is particularly important for Ireland because of our disproportionately large European Economic Zone (EEZ) and the high level of activity by other EU vessels in our waters.

The use of electronic fishing logbooks will also facilitate earlier and more accurate transmission of data, direct from the fishing vessel, rather than after the vessel returns to port as in the current manual system.

The introduction of the Commission's proposal is, I am convinced, a major step forward in giving the control authorities tools to effectively address illegal fishing and the non-recording and the misreporting of landings.