Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 295: To ask the Minister for Transport the estimate of the number of deck hands, engineers, mates and qualified skippers who have qualifications in their respective fields; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14692/08]

Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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The Department does not maintain records of the numbers of seafarers who are employed at any one time onboard Irish Registered vessels.

I am informed by the Marine Survey Office that a "snapshot" of the numbers of seafarers employed on Irish Registered vessels was taken during September 2007 in connection with a study being undertaken by the European Commission. The statistics in the following table relate to passenger and cargo vessels that were in service on a year round basis at that time.

In addition to the numbers of seafarers accounted for above there are approximately 70 seasonal passenger vessels in operation throughout the summer period only. These vessels would each typically employ up to four seafarers.

The Department maintains a database to record all Certificates of Competency and Certificates of Equivalent Competency that have been issued to officers in accordance with the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) Convention 1978 as amended in 1995. A total of 2572 certificates have been issued under these arrangements since September 2001.

In comparison, the records for the number of Fishing Vessel Certificates of Competency issued since 2001 indicate that 365 of these types of certificate have been issued to officers in the Irish fishing vessel fleet, which numbers approximately 1800 vessels.