Against a backdrop of declining whitefish stocks in particular and consequent restrictions on catch levels, the primary challenge facing fishermen and their families concerns the need for effective conservation measures to provide for the sustainable exploitation of these stocks into the future.
In this regard, the Government has identified a number of key priorities to protect the livelihood of fishermen in particular and the seafood industry generally into the future. These are being actively pursued at EU level in the context of ensuring a strong and effective Common Fisheries Policy.
The key priorities relate to how the Common Fisheries Policy should operate in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, better governance, more stakeholder involvement and an increased emphasis on conservation and stock building. Significant progress was achieved on these policy fronts in the reformed CFP, which was agreed last year.
Ireland's primary interest concerns fish stocks in western waters which are around our coast. In October, I secured agreement on a new Irish conservation box off the south and west coast of Ireland and a fishing effort management regime for western waters. The main implication of this agreement is the guarantee that there will be no increases in fishing effort by foreign fishing fleets in waters around Ireland and sensitive waters off the south and west coast will be given special protection. The western waters agreement also ensures that the current balance between northern and southern waters will be maintained, thus ensuring that there can be no transfer of effort by Spain from waters off its coast, where fish stocks are over exploited, into Irish waters.
At the Fisheries Council this week, I will be working to ensure that those stocks outside safe biological limits are adequately protected and are governed, as necessary, by appropriate recovery regimes. Such regimes should take account of the individual situations involving strong technical conservation measures to protect juvenile fish and/or adult spawning stock and other conservation tools as necessary. Such regimes must have strong control and enforcement measures applied to them to ensure that any recovery plans introduced are implemented effectively in a fair and even-handed way across all member states.
The question of how best to proceed with stock recovery plans is a key issue for discussion at Council and I will be working with colleagues to agree recovery plans for the stocks of importance to Ireland that take account of the particular specificities of the fisheries involved.
