Seafood industry slates Government over ‘botched job’ on EU directive

THE Government’s handling of the introduction of a new law to manage the health status of Irish farmed fish and shellfish stocks has been severely criticised by the industry as a “botched job”.

IFA Aquaculture, representing over 300 companies involved in farming seafood, has written to the ministers responsible describing the piecemeal introduction of a European directive on fish health as “a serious blow to relations between the sector and the Government”.

They claim it is an unnecessarily unworkable application by the Government of an otherwise sound piece of European legislation and should be immediately retracted and amended.