Progress made on retaining cod and herring quotas

IRELAND made significant progress in retaining its quota for cod and herring and got an unexpected increase in prawns during the second day of negotiations on the annual fish quota in Brussels yesterday.

The industry was faced with cuts of up to 55% in some areas under the original proposals to cut the annual quota by 35% and to abolish the Hague Preferences, an additional quota unique to the Irish industry.

According to the Federation of Irish Fishermen (FIF) the reduction in cod quota will be just 5% which was welcomed by their spokesperson Jason Whooley.

They had similar success with Celtic Sea herring, another very important species for the industry, where cuts of 35% were on the table but these have now been reduced to 15%.

The Irish Fishermen’s Federation, which had warned that the severe cuts could force four processing factories to close down, welcomed the reduction in the proposed cut.

Negotiations that began slowly on Tuesday afternoon resumed yesterday and were expected to continue into the early hours in an effort to agree on the amount of fish that could be taken from EU waters and the days fishermen can spend at sea.

A new set of compromise proposals presented by the commission late yesterday afternoon however did not meet the demands of all of the EU’s marine ministers and their fishing industry.

Marine Minister John Browne pointed out that Irish fishermen were facing quota cuts on 18 species of fish that are important to the industry.

He welcomed the changes in herring and cod quotas and said that together with the retention of the Hague preferences and the 17% increase in prawns the future of the industry should be secure.

Efforts to bring the Irish Box, an area off the south and south west coast, into the days-at-sea regime were modified, also under Irish pressure. As a result this region will continue to be closed to all fishing for two to three months early in the year and during the rest of the year vessels will not be limited to fishing there for a precise number of days a month.

However there has been no progress in a number of other areas of concern to fishermen, including the regulations on the weighing of fish that militated against Irish fishermen because the factories were so far from where they land their catch.

Mr Whooley said that fishermen north and south had joined forces in trying to have the regulations changed to take account of the unique Irish conditions.