EU fish farming findings not relevant to Ireland

I refer to Ann Cahill’s article (Irish Examiner, September 17) concerning a report from the European Court of Auditors entitled ‘EU has ‘wasted’ €500m on fish farms’.

As the State agency with responsibility for the development of fish farming in Ireland, your readers might come away with the wrong impression concerning state financial assistance available to the industry in Ireland. The Court of Auditors report was based on 60 projects in six EU states. There were no Irish projects in the sample, so their conclusions are not directly relevant to Ireland. The Court of Auditors also expressed concern about the level of environmental assessment applied to the sample projects before grants were approved. Whilst there may be issues in other member states, all Irish aquaculture projects applying for financial assistance under the European Fisheries Fund are subject to a rigorous scoring procedure which takes into account environmental impact and they also have an environmental assessment carried out by BIM and the Marine Institute. So the general criticisms levelled certainly do not apply to the procedures followed here. Finally, the report is not an audit of the aquaculture industry, it is an audit of the administrative arrangements used by certain governments. It makes no adverse findings against fish farming, nor does it suggest that the sector is having any adverse environmental impact on Europe’s ecosystem. The report recognises the need for the sector to expand. The EU has a staggering €16bn trade deficit in seafood every year.

Donal Maguire