Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

567. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the status of issuing of draft licences for fishing on the Shannon Estuary; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41472/15]

Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Salmon stocks are managed in Ireland on an individual River basis, due to the fact that each river has a genetically unique stock. Rivers are only open to harvest fisheries where there is an exploitable surplus above the individual River's conservation limit. The conservation limit is the minimum number of spawning adults required to maintain a healthy population. I am advised by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) that, in the case of estuaries where there is a mix of individual river stocks each river contributing to the estuary must be above its own conservation limit before harvest fishing is permitted. This is because it is not possible to disaggregate fish in a mixed stock area and the imperative to protect vulnerable individual stocks from indiscriminate fishing and avoid exploitation of those stocks within the mix that are below their conservation limit.

Within the Shannon Catchment two of six rivers are open to angling and of these one is open to commercial fishing for 2015. The River Mulkear is open to angling on a catch and release basis, and the River Feale open to angling and commercial fishing as it has a sustainable surplus. There is also a catch and release stretch for angling allowed on the lower Shannon under a by-law, between O’Brien's Bridge and Thomond Bridge for recreational angling.

As the River Shannon is below its conservation limit, the Estuary is closed to commercial exploitation of salmon.