THE EUROPEAN Commission has refused a request by the Government to allow the owners of 22 fishing vessels to increase the size of their boats to improve hygiene and safety.
The decision could cost the owners tens of millions of euro in compensation they are claiming for extra "tonnage" payments they have already made to improve their vessels.
Under the EU common fisheries policy, each member state has a maximum allowed tonnage for its fleet and vessel owners who want to increase the size of their trawlers must buy extra tonnage from other boat owners. However, the commission operates a scheme to enable owners to increase their vessel size purely for hygiene or safety reasons.
In 2001, the vessel owners applied to increase the size of their vessels but their application was rejected in 2003 by the commission as incompatible with the scheme.
The vessel owners successfully challenged this decision at the European Court of First Instance (CFI) - Europe's second-highest court. It found that the commission had "exceeded its powers" by adopting decision criteria that were not in line with rules agreed by EU member states.
The CFI annulled the commission's decision in April 2003 to refuse the owners' requests to add additional tonnage to their vessels and ordered it to pay costs.
Following the CFI ruling the owners of the vessels based in Donegal, Cork and Galway launched a legal action to receive compensation from the State for the improvements they had already undertaken on their ships.
This case was pending while the commission re-examined its original decision to reject the original application in 2001.
In a notice published yesterday, the commission said it was again refusing the requests by the 22 owners to increase their maximum tonnage because the Government was "not able to prove that the capacity increases to the vessels were necessary for safety reasons". It said new evidence showed that in each case, the applicant's vessel had a bigger fishing hold, more powerful engine and larger fishing gear than before they were improved.
The decision was strongly criticised yesterday by the solicitor acting on behalf of the 22 vessel owners. "None of our vessel owners have received any notification of this yet from the Department [of the Marine] or the commission," said Diarmuid Barry of DP Barry Co in Killybegs.
"It seems they have used the same procedure as before to refuse the requests despite the previous court decision."
A commission spokeswoman denied it was ignoring the court ruling by continuing to reject the application by the 22 vessel owners. "In fact it is the Irish vessel owners who tried to circumvent EU rules by hiding the true information from the commission," she said. "It is correct that the first commission decisions were not correctly argued and therefore we have sought to receive more information to have a better basis for our decisions."
The Government said it would comment on the commission decision today.