Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 January 2021
1171. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if compensation will be given to boats that traditionally fished in UK waters and have not been given this permission since 1 January 2021, in view of the serious loss of income; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1561/21]
View answerWithin the terms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and UK, access arrangements are set out in Article 8 - Fish. This Article sets out: provided that TACs have been agreed, each Party shall grant vessels of the other Party access to fish in its waters in the relevant ICES sub-areas that year. Access shall be granted at a level and on conditions determined in those annual consultations. In relation to the main access arrangements, the Agreement also provides that the outcome of the consultations should normally result in each Party granting:
(a) access to fish stocks listed in the Annex to the Agreement - these are the stocks that are shared between the EU and UK subject to at a level that is reasonably commensurate with the parties respective shares of the TACs;
(b) access to fish non- quota stocks in each others EEZ's at a level that at least equates to the average tonnage fished by that Party in the waters of the other Party during the period 2012-2016; and
(c) access to waters of the Parties between 6 and 12nm in ICES divisions 4c (southern North Sea and 7d-g (English Channel, south - west coast of England and part of south - east coast of Ireland) to the extent that Union fishing vessels and UK fishing vessels had access to these waters on 31 December 2020.
I have asked my Department to work to ensure that fishing vessels which traditionally fished in UK waters will be granted such access and on this basis vessel operators will not be disadvantaged.
While authorisation for access for all licensed and registered fishing vessels has been sought from the UK authorities, at this time approval has been granted to tranches of fishing vessels which have been identified as requiring such access.
The UK Authorities authorised access on a staged basis initially on 31 December for 141 vessels which were identified, in consultation with the Producer Organisations, taking into account vessels that were most likely to fish in the first week of January.
Since the 31st December 2020, two further lists of Irish vessels have been sent to the Commission to request authorisation, by the UK authorities, for these vessels to fish in the 12- 200 nm UK EEZ based on licence holders who contacted the Department seeking such access and those that had fished in UK waters in 2019 or 2020 based on relevant records. A further 48 vessels have now been authorised by the UK authorities and the Department has been advised by the Commission that the second list of 20 vessels has already been transmitted to the UK authorities and is hoping to hear shortly regarding the status of this request. The Department is considering how smaller fishing vessels that do not have a Vessel Monitoring System to record activity may be appropriately identified and will be consulting the National Inshore Fisheries Forum in that regard.
