Scrappage plan targets ‘chronic’ over-fishing

A LONG-AWAITED compensation scheme that could see two out of every five Irish fishing vessels removed from overfished waters is set to come into effect in February.

The decommissioning or scrappage scheme, confirmed for next month by the Government, will see fishermen compensated for agreeing to take their boat out of service.

The move is an attempt to resolve the chronic over-fishing of Irish waters which is seeing:

* Many fishermen being forced to leave the industry because they are not making money.

* Thousands of tonnes of fish discarded at sea due to strict quotas.

* No young people being attracted into the industry.

* Fishermen being forced to go out in unsafe conditions because they need to make the most of fishing seasons.

The key finding of a Government study of the fishing industry last year was that Irish waters were being overfished.

“The only way to deal with that is to introduce a voluntary scheme where people would be paid to take their boats out of the system by decommissioning them,” said Gerard O’Flynn.

“Fishermen have been under huge pressure with very tight enforcement of regulations and too many people chasing too few fish. There are huge problems in terms of core survivability and ability to stay legal.”

One of the problems of overfishing is that quotas are exceeded very quickly.

“When a fisherman goes out fishing he will catch a mixed bag of fish and on occasion, the quota for a certain kind of fish might be exceeded, even though he has not targeted that particular species,” said Mr O’Flynn.

“He has no option but to discard that fish because it is illegal to land it.

“A classic case was cod off the south coast last year. From August the cod quota was totally exhausted but fishermen out there fishing for other whitefish species were invariably catching cod as part of their routine catches. In order to stay legal they had to dump it.

“As a result of this scheme there will be less boats fishing and there will be more fish and a bigger quota available to the people remaining in the industry.”

Another consequence of the industry restrictions has been the level of fatalities, particularly last year, because of fishermen going out in dangerous conditions to try to catch as much as possible. Seven fishermen were killed in the space of just a few hours when two vessels, the Pere Charles and Honeydew II, sank in bad weather off the south-east coast last year.

The target of the scrappage scheme is to reduce the number of boats by 40% which Mr O’Flynn said was a unfortunate necessity.

The compensation rates for fishermen who decommission their boats have not been formally announced but Mr O’Flynn said they will have to be significant.

“If they are not attractive, people are not going to avail of it. Also, there is no point in handing out substantial grant aid if it is going to be clawed back in the form of taxation. That is just a waste of public time and public money.”