It is a long-standing legal requirement that all fishing vessels wishing to engage in commercial sea-fishing must have a sea-fishing boat licence. This requirement is set down in section 222B of the Fisheries (Consolidation) Act 1959, as amended and restated by section 4 of the Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2003.
Vessels targeting wild and farmed bivalve molluscs are licensed in what is called the Specific segment of the Irish fleet. These vessels, such as mussel dredgers, were exempt from the application of EU fleet policy but come within a recently introduced EU policy on fleet management. This means that these vessels, which had already required to be licensed, must in future comply with replacement capacity requirements in order to be licensed. These vessels were, in fact, already subject to an equivalent replacement capacity requirement under national licensing policy as a moratorium on the licensing of further such vessels, other than following replacement, has been in place since April 1999.
Full-time aquaculture service vessels, including vessels which target mussel seed, are exempt from the replacement capacity requirement as they do not come within the new EU policy but still require to be licensed and must comply with strict national licensing criteria.
