Holly Cairns
Question:82. Deputy Holly Cairns asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the actions he is taking to prohibit pair trawling inside the six-mile limit. [18344/23]
View answerThursday, 20 April 2023
Questions (82)
Oral answers (12 contributions)
I am regularly contacted by residents in west Cork concerned about trawling in Bantry Bay and Kenmare Bay. I have to explain to them that this is permitted even though it is in the programme for Government. We know it is legally sound.
Since the court ruling in October 2020 overturned the policy directive, I have repeatedly asked the Minister to resolve the issue by bringing the directive process into place again. Two and a half years later, when will he do that?
I continue to work on the commitment set out in the programme for Government to:
Ensure that inshore waters continue to be protected for smaller fishing vessels and recreational fishers and that pair trawling will be prohibited inside the six-mile limit.
That is a programme for Government commitment on which I am determined to follow through.
As the Deputy said, in December 2018 the then Minister, Deputy Creed, announced that vessels over 18 m would be excluded from trawling in inshore waters inside the six-nautical-mile zone from 1 January 2020. There was a transition period of three years for vessels over 18 m targeting sprat to allow adjustment for those who had previously been carrying out that fishing activity. A policy directive was then issued by the Minister to the independent licensing authority to give effect to those measures.
I am committed to the sustainability of fishing in Irish waters and the exclusion of vessels over 18 m from trawling in waters inside the six-nautical-mile zone. As the Deputy will know, in respect of the decision to exclude vessels over 18 m from inside the six-nautical-mile zone, a court case, involving legal proceedings to the High Court, was taken by two applicant fishermen. That challenge was upheld by the judge, who held in summary that the court's final order should be, among other matters, a declaration that policy directive 1 of 2019 was made in breach of fair procedures and is void. I appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal and we received the unapproved judgment in July of last year, and only on 10 March past we got the final judgment.
What is happening now is that my team is assessing the outcome and the full details of that final judgment. It is a programme for Government commitment to exclude larger vessels from inside the six-nautical-mile zone, and that is something I will now step out. I could not do anything about it until 10 March, when we got the final judgment back. Were we to reinstate that now, the required legal process would have to be gone through to take it forward again.
When the Minister says his team now has to assess the situation, I am not really sure what needs to be assessed at this point. He says he is committed to banning this, but the issue remains that inshore trawling is currently permitted and will be for some time until the Minister resolves the matter. The Government says constantly that it is committed to banning this activity. Inshore fishers support such a ban, as do marine and tourism businesses, coastal communities and environmentalists. Why is the Minister not acting more quickly? I appreciate that the legal proceedings took time, but he has been seemingly making no provisions in the meantime. Now he is only assessing the matter. Where is the urgency? At each stage we get the same standard response that the Department is considering the rulings. Two and a half years later, what is the plan? The Minister's team is assessing the matter. He knew that the final ruling was coming. The court identified the Department's failure to properly inform the UK and the EU about the directive, which is a separate matter, but, importantly, the court has found that the policy is legally sound. There is no issue with the policy. It was on a technicality that it was overruled. What, then, is the Minister assessing? What is the delay? When will he proceed?
That is a very unfair presentation and not representative of the situation at all. It is just over a month since the final judgment was returned-----
But the Minister knew for two years that that ruling was coming.
-----so it simply was not possible to do anything until we got the final judgment. Is it now four years since the whole process started? We have to make sure any step we take now meets any legal challenges and is fully robust. The team has fully assessed the previous judgment. We are now working on assessing this judgment. We have had it only a month. We will step it out. My commitment and this Government's commitment, our programme for Government commitment, is resolute. It is one of the things to which we all committed when we went to this side of the House. We are very committed to the inshore sector. We are very committed to protecting the area inside the six-nautical-mile zone for the inshore sector. The Deputy's presentation of the matter is not fair at all because everything that can be done will be done as quickly as possible by me and the team now to step this out.
Respectfully, the Minister has had a month to act but he has had two years to assess or to plan or whatever he is saying the Department is doing now. I thank him for the reply but, in essence, it is the same kind of holding response I have got for two years at this stage. Will he just confirm that he will begin the process to establish the policy directive, and when will that be? What steps is he taking this time to ensure the Department does this correctly so we do not end up in the same position again?
I have previously raised the possibility of using existing instruments to curtail inshore trawling in the meantime. I highlighted the issue of a Bantry Bay by-law that prohibits trawling. That could be used at least to help to address the issue in one section of our coast. Even that would have an enormous benefit for stocks and other environmental issues. However, in reply to the parliamentary question on this that I tabled a few weeks ago, the Minister gave me a one-sentence response. He said:
I thank the Deputy for their question, and I wish to advise the Deputy that harbour bye-laws for Bantry Bay are a matter for the local port authority.
Respectfully, that is just not the answer of somebody who is taking this matter seriously.
Well, that is just a statement of fact and an obvious response to the question the Deputy asked.
Exactly. We already know that.
There is no point in Deputy Cairns chiding me for her having received a holding response over the past two years. I cannot believe how she would expect to get anything other than a holding response for the past two years, given that the matter was being considered by the courts. It is only a month ago that we received the final judgment from the courts. Until then, any response the Deputy would have got would have been the same, that is, that we were waiting for the final judgment and were not in a position to do anything until we got it. That is the only response the Deputy could have got and the only response she could have expected to have got over those two years.
Now I would like a different response.
Yes, but there is no point in chiding me for having got a holding response for that period because the Deputy would have fully expected that and would have known the answer before asking the question. Now I plan to step this forward urgently. We are now fully assessing the legal situation around that, and I will promptly move forward with this Government's total commitment to backing the inshore sector and protecting the area inside the six-nautical-mile zone for the inshore sector. We will step that out as quickly as possible, making sure that we get a successful outcome to what it is we want to achieve.