Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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444. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources further to Parliamentary Question No.191 if there has been any reports or surveys on salmon numbers around our coast in recent times; if he will provide the findings of same. [55472/13]

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Ireland manages salmon stocks on an individual river basis. This management is carried out by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI), the State Agency with statutory responsibility for inland fisheries. This is based on the fact that each of Ireland’s 142 salmon rivers has its own genetically unique stock of salmon which migrates to sea as juveniles and returns to the same river in adulthood to spawn and create the next generation of fish exclusive to that river.

The Atlantic salmon is a protected species under the EU Habitats Directive and Ireland’s current salmon management regime complies with the requirements of this legislation. The conservation imperative means that exploitation of salmon from each river is only permitted where the independent Standing Scientific Committee for Salmon (SSCS) determines that the stock in that river is above its conservation limit. The advice of the SCC is available on the website of IFI –

During migration from rivers to marine feeding grounds, salmon from both rivers in Ireland and rivers in other countries travel through Ireland’s coastal waters. These "mixed stocks", either in coastal waters or distant waters, pose particular difficulties for management as they contain individual fish often from a wide range of rivers some of which are below sustainable reproductive capacity. The difficulty is that it is not possible to disaggregate the individuals or stock groups at sea.

Research in coastal areas and in the marine environment concentrates on increasing knowledge of migratory patterns, marine based mortality and return rates to home rivers as stock assessments can only be carried out on the individual stock in each river.

The conservation/exploitation balance is best achieved where fisheries target individual river-based stocks that have been shown to be at full reproductive capacity and capable of sustaining the genetically unique population of that individual river.

In order to align fully with the EU Habitats Directive and the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (NASCO) advice, the Irish Government closed mixed stock fisheries in 2007 including coastal and offshore fishing for salmon. Harvest fisheries are now only allowed on individual river stocks which are shown to have a surplus of fish over the conservation limit. Fisheries in estuaries may also be permitted where the stocks from individual rivers entering the estuaries are each meeting their individual conservation limits.

Any deviation from this policy would be contrary to the international independent scientific advice as the "home river" of off-shore salmon cannot be identified and such a move could potentially lead to conflict with EU and international obligations on grounds of not protecting vulnerable Irish and international salmon stocks.