Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 December 2020
848. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of boats in the fishing fleet by location and size in each of the years 1990 to 2019 and to date in 2020. [41941/20]
View answerThe Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2003 transferred the functions of sea-fishing boat licensing from the Minister to the Licensing Authority for Sea-fishing Boats, which operates on an independent basis subject to criteria set out in that Act and Ministerial Policy Directives. The Licensing Authority is the Registrar General of Fishing Boats, an official of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or, under the superintendence of the Registrar General, the Deputy Registrar General of Fishing Boats.
The Registrar General of Fishing Boats is charged with maintaining a Register of Fishing Boats and with the proper management of the capacity of the Irish fleet.
The Registrar General has advised me of the number of vessels registered in the Irish fleet for the years 1995-2020. The statistical information is provided as per vessel length (measured in metres) at:
Information on the home ports of fishing vessels is not available.
The Registrar General has further advised me that, while the information being provided from 1995 onwards is available electronically, information prior to that date is not readily available and would take exhaustive resources to retrieve, analyse and collate with no guarantee that the information sought can be delivered as requested. On that basis it is not being provided.
