Legislation approved by Minister for Environment Eamon Ryan will allow for 81 rivers to be accessible for salmon and sea trout angling next year.
Of the 81, 42 will be open, with a further 39 open to “catch and release” angling, he said, noting the “general improvements in stocks from 2023 have been maintained for 2024”.
However, 66 rivers are to be closed as they have no sustainable surplus available, a point highlighted recently by an Afloat reader in County Cork.
The legislation is based on management advice from Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) for over 140 genetically individual wild salmon stocks in Ireland, which was based on individual scientific assessments.
The minister said the assessments are carried out every year by the Technical Expert Group on Salmon (TEGOS) – an all-island independent scientific group comprising experts from a range of bodies.
“Many of our rivers are not at a sufficiently high-water quality level to support sustainable stocks, often caused by agricultural activities, and to a lesser extent, insufficient treatment of waste water,” he said.
“ This year’s advice was also made available as part of a statutory public consultation process during which written submissions from stakeholders (including the recreational and commercial fishing and the environmental sectors) were sought on the draft regulations,” he said.
“Ireland has long been internationally recognised for embedding the conservation imperative as a vital component of our management of the precious salmon resource,” Ryan said.
“ While the policy has served us well for more than a decade, I intend, as part of a broader inland fisheries policy review, to set out options for improvement, with an even greater focus on conservation, in our management regime and for modernising licensing requirements, to ensure access to the resource where its conservation and biodiversity needs are met,” he said.
The list of rivers is downloadable below as a PDF file
