Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 402: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his attention has been drawn to the case of a person (details supplied) in County Louth who uses an environmentally sustainable fishing method, a seine netter, which uses only 25% of the fuel that trawlers used who was forced to tie up their boats and whose family run fish shop was put in serious difficulties as a result of lack of supply due to his interpretation of EU rules on Irish Sea management; if there were uncaught Irish quotas for haddock and Dublin bay prawns which could not be caught by Irish vessels in December; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2423/12]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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1The EU Cod Recovery Plan Regulation 2342/2008, established a long-term plan for cod stock covering both the setting of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and Quotas each year and limiting effort in terms of time spent fishing at sea in each area. The areas covered of interest to Ireland are the Irish Sea and Area VIa (west of Scotland and north-west of Ireland).

Under the terms of the 2008 EU Regulation a specified number of days at sea were allocated annually to each Member State for specified gear types in the TAC and Quota Regulation. The effort set for 2011 involved a 25% cut on that allocated for the pervious year. The Regulation, under Article 13, permits the allocation of additional effort for highly selective gear and cod avoiding fishing trips. Under Article 11 of the EU Regulation, there exists the possibility of the EU Commission granting an exemption for vessels provided that the percentage of cod catches as assessed by the EU Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee (STECF) does not exceed 1.5% of total catches. The EU Commission, following discussions at the EU December Fisheries Council has amended its interpretation of Article 13 in terms of the amount of fishing effort that may be recouped through the use of the provisions of that Article, following representations made by the UK authorities. It is important to note that this re-interpretation by the EU Commission is applicable only to situations whereby Article 13 is being implemented in terms of fishing trips being subject to use of highly selective gear and cod-avoidance.

The EU Regulation delegated responsibility to the Member State for the implementation of the cod effort allocations. In Ireland, an Effort Advisory Group comprising industry representatives, the Marine Institute, BIM and the Department made recommendations on the arrangements for each area and each gear type each year which were implemented. This Group has been meeting on a regular basis since 2008 and make recommendations on the measures to be applied to each fishery in both the Irish Sea and in Area VIa (off Donegal) which are subject to the Cod Recovery Plan and these recommendations have been implemented.

In Area VIa, an area off Greencastle is closed for 6 months each year to protect juvenile cod under Article 13 of the Regulation. This closure delivers reduced cod mortality by the Irish fleet each year and on that basis Ireland claims back effort based on the reduction in cod mortality delivered through the closure. In addition, in Area VIa Ireland claims back the full 25% cut applied to all effort in deeper waters in Area VIa as allowed in the Regulation on the basis that cod is not generally found in these deeper waters. In the Irish Sea, in 2009 and 2010 Ireland has not introduced specific measures to reduce cod catches and accordingly have not been in a position to claim back any of the effort cut each year. At the end of 2011 a limited scheme involving the use of the highly selective fishing gear, the Swedish gird in the prawn fishery was implemented by Ireland in the Irish Sea. At the end of the EU Fisheries Council the prawn (TR2) and mixed whitefish fisheries (TR1), in the Irish Sea which had been closed, were re-opened following the transfer of fishing effort to Ireland from France and the UK which had been negotiated on the margins of the Council.

The purpose of the EU Regulation is to support the recovery of the cod stocks in the Irish Sea. Seine Nets which are used by the named individual comes under Gear type TR1 in the EU Regulations and this gear is used to specifically target whitefish species including cod. In the past, actions have not been proposed or applied to TR1 type fishing gear (including seine nets) which would involve the fishing operations coming under the scope of Article 13 of the EU Regulations. Following discussions with the fishing industry at the Effort Advisory Group last week, there does not appear to be, at this time, an acceptable means for vessels using seine nets to meet the terms of Article 13 of the EU Regulation. Proposals from industry for the use of cod avoidance measures to meet the terms of Article 11 or Article 13 of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1342/2008 are assessed by Bord Iascaigh Mhara and the Marine Institute and the agencies are available to advise vessel owners in relation to the options for the use of cod avoidance measures / highly selective fishing gear in the fisheries in the Irish Sea.

The current quota usage figures for 2011 in ICES Area VIIa (Irish Sea) for Haddock is that there is 22% of the quota remaining. The quota for nephrops/ prawns for ICES Area VII covers all the stocks around the coast, the waters off the west coast, the south coast and the Irish Sea. The current quota usage figure for 2011 is that there is 18% of the quota remaining. 10% of the annual quota may be carried forward into 2012 for each of these stocks.