Norway says Irish boats overfishing mackerel by 100%

EU inspectors investigating Dutch accusations of fraud within the multi million pound Irish mackerel fishery have received a written claim from Norway that Irish boats have overfished their quota by "100 per cent".

Figures presented to the EU Commission by the Norwegian Fishing Vessel Owners' Association (NFVOA) purport to show that Irish fishermen caught an extra 200,000 tonnes of mackerel in 1995, which was "passed off" as horse mackerel or scad, a non quota species resembling mackerel.

Norway shares the highly lucrative migratory mackerel stock with the EU, and has been seeking to increase its take by more than 30 per cent.

Denying the claims, Mr Joey Murrin of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation (KFO) said yesterday Irish skippers were being "scapegoated" in a mackerel quota war. Irish mackerel boats landing into Norway were very closely monitored, he emphasised.

Any EU investigation should be extended to all mackerel catching member states, he said. "Let's look at everybody's books and clear this matter up once and for all," he suggested.

The Department of the Marine confirmed that the EU investigation, ordered by the EU fisheries commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, after complaints by a Dutch MEP, Mr Leen van der Waal, is continuing. Last month the Department said the EU inquiry had found no evidence of discrepancies.

All mackerel landed into Irish ports by Irish vessels was checked, controlled and recorded in official statistics, and the Department stood by these figures, a spokeswoman said.

There had been significantly higher catches of horse mackerel in recent years, because of a reduction in the mackerel quota, she added.

The Norwegian claims are based on the official EU export statistics published in Eurostat. The statistics indicate that Ireland exported 199,544 tonnes (round weight) of mackerel in 1995. In the same year, Ireland had a quota of 79,030 tonnes.

The previous year, Ireland had a mackerel quota of 99,590 tonnes, but exports are said to have reached 124,609 tonnes. There were also discrepancies between exported quantities and quota in 1993, according to the Norwegians, who have said that horse mackerel may have been "mistakenly" recorded in the statistics as mackerel.

If the claims are proven, Ireland could face compensation demands from other EU member states with mackerel quotas.

The Christmas issue of the Norwegian fishing industry newspaper, Fiskaren, said this could mean "the end of the road for a number of the largest and best established fishing companies in Ireland, and economic ruin for the fishery harbour of Killybegs on the north west coast".

It had "long been known" that the Irish had fished "large quantities of undersized mackerel west of Ireland", grounds also frequented by horse mackerel, the newspaper claimed. "Even though there are at present only allegations, which are partially documented by publicised statistics, there is much to indicate that this affair may well prove to be one of history's biggest abuses of fishery quotas, if not history's biggest," Fiskaren commented.

Mr Murrin said yesterday that reports from his skippers, now back at sea fishing for mackerel, indicated that the monitoring of landings by Norway was always "100 per cent". "So where is this so called illegal fish supposed to be going?" Mr Murrin asked.

The Department of the Marine said it was not carrying out any investigation of its own into the claims.