EU fisheries ministers meet in Luxembourg today to do battle with the Fisheries Commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, over her proposals to get member states to decommission up to 40 per cent of their fleets over the next six years.
Reaching agreement on this dossier is likely to be the toughest test yet of the Irish EU Presidency, as this State is among those most strongly opposed to the Commission.
Warning that several overfished species are in imminent danger of biological collapse, Ms Bonino argues that to leave the controls to market forces would lead to the inexorable and irreversible decimation of fleets - "without fish, it is not possible to have a fishing sector", she says.
But 13 of 15 member states, under pressure from powerful fishing lobbies, dispute both the scientific assessment of stocks and the mathematics of the Commission's targets - the other two, Austria and Luxembourg, have no fleets.
Late last week, briefing the press, the Commissioner appeared to dilute her proposals somewhat by arguing that the reductions could be a combination of capacity and fishing effort (restrictions of days at sea). But she insisted that the bulk of the reduction must be permanent - through decommissioning of boats - and that the overall size of the cuts must be maintained.
The Commission's proposals for the six year Multi Annual Guidance Programme 4 (MAGP4) are based on scientific estimates of how much fishing various species can sustain - a combination of the size of the stock and a catch rate of no more than a quarter each year (beyond which, scientists agree, reproduction of stocks becomes impossible).
EU wide targets are then set, broken down by fishing region and catch type. Once the principle is accepted the aim of today's meeting individual member states face difficult negotiations with the Commission over their specific allocations.
To sugar the pill, in the first three year phase of reductions in capacity the Commission has allocated some £2,500 million to schemes to cushion the impact of the cuts. The second phase would be funded out of the post 1999 budget.
A final decision on the controversial package is due to be taken at the fisheries ministers' meeting next month, but such is the controversy few believe they will succeed and there is talk of not being able to agree until next year.
The most severe cutbacks proposed are in fishing for salmon, where the Commissioner has called for a "non negotiable" reduction of 50 per cent of the fleet tonnage. But in this case her target is expected to be mainly the Baltic fleet, rather than the relatively small operations off Ireland and Scotland, according to Commission sources.
Irish fishermen are most likely, however, to be affected by the proposed cuts of 40 per cent in the mackerel and herring fleet tonnage fishing off the west of Scotland; the whitefish and mackerel and herring fleets fishing in the sectors off the south and west coasts of Ireland; and all fleets working in the Irish Sea.
The most likely area of agreement today will be the exemption from the cutbacks of small coastal boats which rarely go beyond 10 miles from the shore.
But Ms Bonino faces a barrage of criticism on her directorate's methodology - ministers will argue her figures are not based on the latest assessments of stocks and ignore Baltic and Mediterranean stocks; that in building in an annual 2 per cent productivity increase due to technology she has "plucked a figure from the sky"; that the approach is too broadbrush - a "sledge hammer approach", according to one Irish official - taking no proper account of regional variations; and that the targets take no account of some sectors where national quotas are not being taken up yet, threatening the agreed relative shares of catch of member states.
Irish officials will argue, for example, that in setting catch reductions for species which are fished together - like in the North Sea the endangered cod, but also non threatened ray, lemon sole, flounder and dab - at 40 per cent to preserve cod stocks, the Commission takes no account of substantial regional variations of each of the species due to water temperature and other factors.
There is also strong criticism of the use of "tonnage" as a measure of a boat's fishing capacity, which some argue can be much better correlated to engine capacity. "Tonnage" in this context is not a measure of weight but of the "enclosed volume capacity" of a boat - the result is, for example, that the construction of new deck housing for the added safety of crew results in increasing the boat's tonnage without any effect on its capacity to fish.
The British also suggest that the Commission should stop subsidising boat construction while it is involved in such dramatic fleet reductions. Irish officials argue that the subsidies are going largely to boats for fishing non threatened species or to replace a larger tonnage of old boats.
The ministers are likely to approve in principle today proposals to put tracking and control devices on all boats longer than 24 metres. Ireland will also raise the "dumping" of Norwegian farmed salmon on EU markets.
