Offers for decommissioning to be made to 57 boat owners 

Portugese share fisherman Bruno aboard the gillnetter Men Scoedec during a trip out to the Atlantic. Picture: Neil Michael

The Government is to pump an additional €15m into its voluntary fishing vessel decommissioning scheme.

Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue announced the increase after meeting with fishing industry representatives in Galway on Tuesday.

Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation CEO Sean O'Donoghue welcomed the move.

“If the money wasn’t increased, a lot of people would not have bothered going for the scheme. So, we do welcome the additional funding," he said.

Initially, 64 applicants opted to join the scheme and offers for voluntary decommissioning will now be made to 57 boat owners who wish to proceed.

This will see just less than a third of the national fishing fleet voluntarily decommissioned. The highest number of applications for the scheme, an estimated 18 to 19 boat owners, hail from Castletownbere, Co Cork, a key fishing port. 

Funding for the decommissioning scheme, one of the key recommendations of the Seafood Task Force, was initially capped at €60m. But based on the high number of applications received by December 2, it became apparent it had been oversubscribed.

At the time, the Department of Agriculture said the scheme was framed “to reduce a certain quantity of capacity" and if all applications succeeded, the scheme would “withdraw more capacity than intended”. It added this “is not the intention” of the scheme.

Following today's meeting with industry representatives, Mr McConalogue said: “In order to ensure all fishers who wished to take part in the scheme could do so and the targets set by the taskforce could be delivered, I have increased the budget for direct payments under the scheme from €60m to a maximum of €75m with tax reliefs increasing proportionately.

“Offers for voluntary decommissioning will now be made to 57 vessel owners," said Mr McConalogue.

The decommissioning of those vessels will make available an extra €34m in quota for the remainder of the whitefish fleet, improving their profitability and securing the future of the fleet.

“I am satisfied I have now enabled all those who have chosen to apply for this scheme receive the full value of the scheme payment as guided by the Seafood Task Force recommendation.”

In the Netherlands, which is also operating a decommissioning scheme, the Dutch government has set aside €155m for the 80 or so boats that applied, meaning owners there will get up to €2.5m each.

Boat owners here who go ahead with decommissioning will only receive a proportion of the total value of their boats and instead of being able to sell the boats, they will all have to be scrapped.

If these boats were to be sold on the open market, they would range in value from €200,000 to €1.5m, with a total second-hand market value of around €35m for the boats that have applied for decommissioning.