An environmental group has called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to separate the State’s Sea Fisheries Protection Agency from control by the Department of Agriculture and the Marine.
As The Times Ireland edition reports today, the Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) believe EU penalties imposed on the Irish fishing sector are a consequence of the SFPA's lack of independence.
The entire Irish fishing sector is now having to bear the burden of penalties arising from an EU audit of specific breaches which were not sufficiently addressed by Irish authorities, FIE says.
The 2018 EU audit had identified “severe and significant weaknesses in the Irish control system” for the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, detailing irregularities, including the manipulation of weighing systems in some instances.
Ireland is already negotiating terms of a payback quotas, as the EU auditors found that Ireland had overfished its quota of mackerel by 28,600 tonnes; horse mackerel quota by 8,100 tonnes and blue whiting by 5,600 tonnes between 2012 and 2016.
The EU’s recent decision to withdraw Ireland’s control plan for weighing catches has caused consternation within the industry, as all seafood catches by both large and small vessels now have to be weighed at the point of landing.
Ireland had previously secured a derogation to allow weighing in factories, due to the loss of quality involved in weighing at the pier.
The FIE has published the full EU audit report on its website, and has also written to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigations and to the Criminal Assets Bureau, asking both agencies if they are aware of the audit team’s recommendations in relation to tackling fraud.
SFPA chair Dr Susan Steele,who is due to take up a post as head of the EU’s fisheries control agency in Vigo, Spain in September, said the EU decision on weighing catches at the point of landing is a “clear marker of tougher fisheries controls across the EU”.
However, the Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation (KFO) has said it is “simply flabbergasted” that what it described as “this bewildering move which has such a direct and draconian impact on all aspects of Irish fisheries” could “be considered without any advance notice”.
In its letter to the Taoiseach, the FIE says that that the root cause of the problem is an undermining of the independence of the SFPA by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Noting the department's “ development priorities”, FIE Director Tony Lowes said the “necessary and appropriate checks and balances incumbent on the department in the exercise of its functions are impossible”.
“The compounding procedures brought against Ireland by the EU are because the SFPA, like the Marine Institute, is administered by the part of the Department of Agriculture also responsible for the promotion of the seafood industry,” he said.
He has urged the Taoiseach to transfer administration and financing of the SFPA to “one of the many non-marine divisions”.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine said it was "not accurate" to suggest it undermined the SFPA's independence.
It said the SFPA's independence is laid down in legislation that is "fully respected", and it said it had also increased the SFPA's budget with further recruitment planned for this year.
Read The Times here
