Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 June 2013
4. Deputy John Browne asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the up-to-date position regarding the Common Fisheries Policy negotiations; the reason he did not have the Hague preferences enshrined in the report; and if he will make one last effort to have it included. [29490/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraI thank Deputy Browne, a former Minister of State in the Department, for raising the matter. It gives me an opportunity to update the House on the result the Irish Presidency has achieved, along with the European Parliament and the Commission, on finalising a Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, reform process that is radical, hugely progressive and will ensure that we still have a fishing industry in ten, 20 or 50 years’ time. We now have a very ambitious reform plan that is implementable, but we will need to work closely with the sector and we will need to support it both financially and from a policy point of view in order for it to be able to implement the change.
The level of support for the reform is significant. Yesterday in the European Parliament the Committee on Fisheries, PECH, voted 20 to one in favour of CFP reform. At the Council representative body, essentially of ambassadors, in COREPER, 27 countries voted in favour of CFP reform. When one sees the largest commercial fishing fleet in the European Union, represented by the Spanish Government, and the Green Party in the European Parliament both voting in favour of reform, one begins to realise that the policy is very broad and ambitious and that is implementable and realistic for the industry.
With regard to Ireland’s concerns, we had some specifics that we needed to get out of the reform in terms of protecting certain things. First, we needed to prevent the privatisation of quotas, and we did that. We had that debate a year ago and that was off the agenda because of our stance a long time ago. We have introduced what fishermen want and what the public want, namely, a way to phase out the discarding of fish, which is very much needed. We have protected the Irish Box in no uncertain terms as per the text of CFP reform. We have introduced a regional decision-making process that will allow fishermen to have a say directly in how their fisheries are run locally. Again, for the first time there is agreement on that.
We have added to the wording of the Hague preferences, albeit in a recital, because it was not possible to enshrine the Hague preferences in the CFP reform text itself, as that would have resulted in a vote. As there are only two countries that benefit from the preferences - namely, Ireland and the UK - any politician would know that we could not have won that vote. The next best option was to support and enhance what is currently the case with the Hague preferences, whereby we invoke them in December each year and make the political case for them. We will continue to do that in the future and we will continue to be successful in benefitting from the Hague preferences.
I join in the good wishes to the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, and hope he will ensure the productive farmers of the south east are protected in the CAP negotiations.
It is a very consistent approach.
I am sure the Minister is aware of the importance of the fishing industry to coastal communities, involving more than 12,000 jobs and more than 2,000 fishing vessels. The Minister referred to support for the CFP in the European Parliament but there does not seem to be the same level of support among the Irish fisheries organisations. I have had representations from Kilmore Quay to Castletownbere to Killybegs, all outlining the serious concerns of fishermen. Fishermen also feel they were excluded from many of the negotiations before they were finalised at European level. Will the Minister comment on that?
Does the Minister accept that the discard compromise is unworkable from an Irish whitefish point of view given the mixed nature of the fisheries in which the vast majority of whitefish vessels operate? Fishermen have expressed serious concern to me in this regard. They also feel that the Minister should seek to have the Hague preferences included because they believe that at some stage in the future - I know the situation as I attended negotiations on previous occasions and we always managed to get them included - the present arrangement might not be sufficient and we might not always win the war. They believe it is important that the Hague preferences be included in the new CFP.
First, in respect of discards, I do not accept this is not implementable. One reason this took so long to negotiate was we were obliged to figure out a way to end discards and to introduce an obligation to land, with some exceptions, while at the same time doing so in a way that could allow fishermen on the deck of a trawler to deliver that change and reform. Management tools have been introduced to allow them to do this. For example, the proposal allows for interspecies flexibility in terms of quota management and for inter-annual flexibility for fishermen in respect of quota management. Moreover, allowances will be made for fishermen to make the case that if they cannot avoid the catching of adult fish in a mixed fishery after they have used technical conservation measures such as mesh size, escape hatches or whatever and they have used the other flexibilities that allow them to have quota flexibility between species and between years, they will have what is called a de minimis rate of discarding allowed, of up to 5% for the fleet. Consequently, there are practical measures that the fishing industry was very much involved in influencing, talking about, designing and so on. I do not accept that point and would not have signed up to the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, reform if I thought this was not implementable. The other point is this proposal does not begin until 2016. There is plenty of time to prepare for that and to design an implementation plan to ensure it works.
What negotiations has the Minister had with the fishing organisations since the conclusion of the talks? What plans does he have to have discussions with them in the future?
I speak with representatives of the fishing organisations all the time. After every significant decision at Council level, I meet the fishing organisations first, even before speaking to a journalist or anyone else, and I did this immediately after the final negotiating mandate for the Council was agreed. Essentially, that now is more or less what is in the CFP reform. We met representatives of all the fishing organisations that were present at that Council meeting and gave them a debriefing, as I always do. However, the leaders of all the key fishing organisations have my mobile telephone number. They ring me when they have concerns on a regular basis and the idea there is no consultation or no access to me from the fishing industry is simply untrue.
I thank the Minister. He has answered the question.
What is true is that I have not been able to spend as much time as I would like to spend in fishing ports and among fishing communities. I will try to address this over the summer.
