I will try to address all the questions. In reply to Deputy Broughan's questions on how these proposals will occur, the situation last year was somewhat unique in that the first major review of the Common Fisheries Policy was carried out. That was coming to a climax at the December Council, at the same time as we had the normal, annual quota-setting exercise and conditions attached to fishing for the subsequent year. This also coincided with the emergence of new recovery measures. There is no a priori reason this proposal should run all the way through to Christmas. It should be dealt with in the normal way by the Council in advance. However, one can never tell when a final agreement may be reached on this issue.
The Deputy referred to discussions with trawler skippers from his constituency who fish in the Irish Sea. It is clear that many of the fish stocks in the Irish Sea are not in a healthy state. The quotas, catches and returns from the Irish Sea would reflect this. That has been the position for a very long time unfortunately.
Ireland recognised back in 1999 that unless a completely new approach was taken to seeking conservation of the cod stock, particularly in the Irish Sea, there would be no cod stocks in future years. We pushed very hard for a new approach which was not just an endless cycle of reducing TACs. The TAC in the Irish Sea has gone from about 5,500 tonnes four or five years ago to 1,200 tonnes currently. Some ten or 15 years ago, the Irish Sea was delivering 12,000 to 13,000 tonnes of cod each year. That gives some indication of the decline of stocks in the Irish Sea.
Ireland's argument is shown in the map attached to the documentation presented to the committee. It has been repeated with slight variation since 2000. We have argued that there must be a custom-built solution that respects the specificity of the fishery. In the Irish Sea, we had good science and knew where the fish spawned every year. However, the fishing fleets had become good at targeting those spawning aggregations and taking them out in large volume. Effectively, the brood stock were being decimated each year when they set about spawning. The only protection that worked was the closure of those areas to targeted fishing of cod during the spawning period. After the spawning period, the fish disperse, so they are not easily fished and have a better chance of survival. Ireland certainly led that debate and pushed very hard to get the Irish Sea cod recovery programme through. This has arrested the decline but has not turned the stock around. We cannot claim a success for it, other than that it stopped the rapid decline of the stock.
The difficulty is that a zero TAC in a situation where fish are caught as a by-catch in other fisheries is a very hard thing to agree and bring into effect. In the Irish Sea, almost every fishery catches some cod. The primary economic activity in the Irish Sea is prawn fishing. Everyone agrees with sustainability and the notion of sustainable fisheries is a three-headed monster, where there is social, economic and environmental sustainability. The problem in the Irish Sea was that if there was a zero cod quota, then effectively all fishing in the Irish Sea would have to stop. Prawn fishing takes a small percentage of the cod stock. The choice would be that the whole prawn fishery would be closed down in the Irish Sea. That would have a dramatic affect on certain communities on the coastline of the Irish Sea dependent on that industry.
These are not the main contributors to the decline of cod. From that point of view, there has been a resistance to zero quotas, which are also extremely difficult to enforce. The quotas now in the Irish Sea are so much lower than they were for a long time after the stock went into decline. When combined with the technical measures and those introduced in addition to those on the map to protect juvenile fish, we have now in place a whole suite of measures that we did not have three years ago. There is a lag time before one sees any impact from that. The measures are in place, but the impact is not seen in a year. We are not sure yet as to the extent to which these measures are having a beneficial impact. Clearly the other element of any technical measures is control and, if we are to get anywhere, this has to improve across all fisheries to ensure these measures are operated as intended.
On Deputy Ryan's question, ISIS, a collective of scientists from member states, recommended that a cod quota should not be set unless a recovery plan was agreed. Once there was a recovery plan, their zero option was not applicable. A recovery plan is in place regarding all of these cod stocks.
It is quite clear that for a number of years to come, we will have much reduced levels of cod. For example, in the North Sea five years ago, we would have had 120,000 tonnes in quotas, or something like that. We are now at about 22,000 tonnes and will have reduced cod fishing for quite a while.
The other element to be borne in mind is that there may be other environmental factors at play above and beyond fishing activity. Cod is an extremely temperature-sensitive species and a change of a couple of degrees in the waters will affect the survivability of the stock so even the best fishery management tools may not be the only factors influencing the continuation of these stocks. However, they are the only factor which we can manage, at least in the short-term.
Deputy Coveney raised a question of Ireland taking a lead on this, and it is true that for quite a number of years, Ireland has taken the lead. The last Irish Presidency delivered regulation 850/98, which is now being built upon. That essentially came from work during the last Irish Presidency to try to advance this pillar of the Common Fisheries Policy. The work which was done with the industry throughout the Common Fisheries Policy review led to a request for a whole range of measures, and this is still being pursued with the Commission.
In the position set out in the note supplied, I do not say that Ireland is trying to stop advances, but that a balanced package of advance is needed. Many additional measures are being made for towed gears, which happen also to be the main gears we use, but they are not the only types of fishing gears impacting on the fish stocks. While there is a commitment in this proposal to bring forward Commission rules on the length and utilisation of gill nets, there is no specific proposal here. This is something Ireland has been urging for a long time because we see a much-enlarged use of these gill nets off the west coast of Ireland impacting on areas which previously acted like reservations for these stocks in areas of rough sea bed that were not trawled upon. These are now being heavily fished with gill nets. There is a need to move forward with a balanced package of technical conservation measures.
The technical conservation measures should move forward at a pace to which the industry can adjust because every time one increases mesh size or bans a gear or closes an area, people are often put out of business if they do not have time to adjust. It is the smaller inshore fishermen who bear the brunt of much of this. Larger boats fishing further offshore can cope with larger mesh sizes, which can have less economic impact on them. It tends to be the smaller, older boats which take the brunt of these mesh size increases because they do not have the power and manoeuvrability to cope with that. This must be balanced in any equation of technical measures one seeks to increase. As we have not seen the hake recovery plan proposals, we have not seen the full suite of measures to be used for stock conservation during this year. We would like to see those measures at this point.