Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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252. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his views that a catch and release system is still in place on the River Boyne; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35052/14]

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) that the stocks, genetically unique to each of Ireland's more than 140 salmon rivers, including the Boyne, are assessed annually by the Independent Standing Scientific Committee for Salmon (SSCS) which includes Scientists from IFI, the Marine Institute, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, ESB, Loughs Agency and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) Northern Ireland. The SSCS annual assessments are carried out with reference to the established Conservation Limit (CL) for each individual river. The Salmon Conservation Limit (CL) in any river is the number of spawning salmon required to maintain a sustainable population and is used to indicate the number of salmon in a river system above which a harvestable surplus can be considered.

The assessments reference the most recent 5 years of available data and is considered by IFI in formulating its management advice as to whether each individual river may be open, open to catch and release angling or closed to all exploitation for the coming year. The SSCS advice for the River Boyne for 2014 is that the river is below its CL and is therefore closed to all harvesting in line with the conservation imperative.

I am further advised that IFI also use Catchment Wide Electro Fishing as an index of juvenile salmon abundance and on the basis of the results obtained from this index the River Boyne has been open to angling on a catch and release basis over recent years.

Additionally, as the Deputy will know, the Boyne is quite a large and wide river and in that regard the SSCS, in the interests of comleteness, apply a raising factor to the counter numbers recorded at Blackcastle Weir to take account of the fact that a proportion of salmon pass over the weir without passing through the fish counters in place at the side of the weir. The SSCS are currently reviewing the raising factor which is applied annually and the outcome of this review will be an important component in considering whether the River Boyne salmon stock can sustain a harvest fishery for salmon in 2015 and future years.