Minister critical of EU fisheries policy

The Minister for the Marine, Mr Fahey, has hit out at the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for "failing" its coastal communities.

In one of the strongest criticisms of the 20-year-old policy by an Irish fisheries minister, Mr Fahey quoted industry descriptions of the policy as "topdown, bureaucratic, complex, remote and centralised".

The Minister was speaking at a fisheries council yesterday in Luxembourg, which heard the first responses to the EU's Green Paper on the CFP review.

Ireland has prepared a submission for the review, which is due to be completed this year, and the Minister endorsed it with a call for a new policy that would reflect the wider objectives of "accountability, clarity, transparency, coherence and less red tape".

The Minister underlined the importance of strong conservation policies, and said that the development of soundly based technical conservation measures was central to "meeting the sustainability challenge". He welcomed the fact that the EU appeared to have accepted Ireland's case in favour of technical conservation measures in the Green Paper.

The Minister called for a review of the issue of unused quotas by some member-states and the system of "quota swaps". The current system was neither fair nor equitable, given that Ireland, with 11 per cent of Union waters, has just four per cent of quotas.

He also called on the EU to analyse the need to extend 12mile limits to protect inshore fishing stocks. Increased fishing effort outside the 12-mile zone had had a devastating effect on inshore stocks in some areas, and Ireland was badly affected by this.

The debate on the Green Paper has already been thrown into some confusion by comments by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Franz Fischler. He is reported to have told an EU select fisheries committee that he favoured the "free market" approach to quotas, which should be traded internationally.

This would concentrate fishing effort in the hands of a few large interests, according to British Tory critics who have condemned the Commissioner's stance.