The Government is "suffocating" the fish farming industry with irrelevant regulations and monitoring, salmon growers said in Galway yesterday .
The chairman of the Irish Salmon Growers' Association (ISGA), Mr Jan Feenstra, said it was obvious that the complex and expensive layers of bureaucracy which the industry had to deal with were "totally out of proportion" to the size and impact of salmon farming in Ireland.
With the economic boom having passed by peripheral coastal areas and the fate of the fishing industry in the hands of the European Commission, it would be "short sighted in the extreme" for the Government to allow this situation to continue. He was speaking at Bradan 2002, the annual ISGA conference in Furbo, Co Galway.
Mr Feenstra gave as an example a situation within the Aquaculture Licence Appeals Board, run by one advisor and six part-time staff.
It was "trying to duplicate the complex and well-resourced licensing system set up by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, and all its agencies and disciplines", he said. "In doing so, the ALAB is rewriting policies which have taken years of consultation and research by competent authorities not only in the Department but also in areas under the jurisdiction of other agencies and bodies.
"This is unsustainable and completely at variance with sound governance of an industry."
He said the licensing system had been "deeply undermined" by the policies of agencies in the pay of the Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources."The fishery board's policy effectively makes the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources redundant as a licensing authority."