Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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33. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the steps he will take to implement a data-collection and biological sampling course for fishermen, as recommended by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs in the Marine Economy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18629/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Under the Action Plan for Jobs 2014, the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs committed to undertaking an assessment of the profile and diversity of the occupations and skills requirements of enterprises in the different sectors that make up the Marine economy. Its April 2015 report – ‘A Study of the Current and Future Skills Requirements of the Marine/Maritime Economy to 2020’,recommends that a data collection and biological sampling course be developed by Bord Iascaigh Mhara on the basis that fishermen trained in data-collection and biological sampling would be in a position to provide consistent and valuable data to researchers and industry/science partnership initiatives.

The Marine Institute provides scientific advice to Government on marine matters and is the national correspondent for the EU Data Collection Framework. A key element of the Institute’s work includes sea sampling of catches on commercial and research vessels. Each year, the Institute contracts fishermen through a public procurement process to conduct sea sampling through an open procedure framework agreement. This work entails catch sampling on commercial fishing vessels operating offshore for 5 to 10 days. A similar scheme is operated for inshore fishing vessels. The Institute provides special training for these contract sea samplers in January each year. The samplers are trained in basic data collection techniques focused on recording observations on catch and collecting samples and basic data.

The Institute also contracts fishermen to provide advice on fishing gear performance during research vessel surveys. The fishermen receive on the job training from the Institute on the research vessel surveys.