As I previously advised the House in my reply to Parliamentary Question No. 172 of 31 March 2004, my Department has received a number of items of correspondence from the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF) in recent years. The most recent representation from NASF was received within the past week and basically reiterates the organisation's general concerns about the netting of wild salmon by Irish commercial fishermen. Neither the North Atlantic Salmon Fund nor any other organisation has made formal offers to my Department to share the cost of a buy-out scheme for driftnetting licences.
The overriding objective of the Government is to preserve the salmon resource in its own right and for the coastal and rural communities that it helps to support. The economic goals for a sustainable commercial salmon fishery based on quality and value rather than volume and the development of salmon angling as an important tourism product are both fully compatible with the primary objective.
Since publication of the salmon management task force report in 1996, my Department has introduced a range of conservation measures which have seen considerable advancements made in salmon policy and in particular the management of the drift net salmon fishery. As part of these measures, the drift net season is now confined to a two-month period in June and July on a four-day week basis. Fishing is only allowed during daylight hours and is confined to the area within the six-mile limit. My Department has also introduced the wild salmon and sea trout tagging scheme regulations, which limits the total allowable commercial catch of salmon.
On the advice of the National Salmon Commission and the National Fisheries Management Executive, I set a total allowable commercial catch of 161,951 fish for the 2004 season. This represented a reduction of 20,049 fish or 11% cut on the total allowable commercial catch for 2003 -182,000 fish. This total allowable catch is consistent with the Salmon Commission's recommendation of last year that a three-year strategy should be put in place aimed at reaching the scientific advice on precautionary catch limits over the period 2003-05.
The current strategy of developing a sustainable commercial and recreational salmon fishery through aligning catches on the scientific advice by next year holds out the strong prospect of a recovery of stocks and of a long term sustainable fishery for both sectors.
There are serious reservations about a national buy-out as a cost efficient workable instrument. It is clear that buy-out is most attractive to those who take few salmon. It is not necessarily an effective means of achieving the shared objective of a restoration of salmon stocks. For some time now, the Government has ruled out buy-out as an effective means of achieving the restoration of salmon stocks and instead promoted the application of quotas on commercial fishing and bag limits on angling to achieve catch reductions as the best instrument available to achieve this objective.
As a result, I have no plans to introduce proposals to purchase commercial salmon fishing licences but I intend to keep the matter under review and I am open to any relevant proposals in the context of the policy outlined.
