Salmon stocks have not improved since drift-netting was banned in Donegal, committee told

Transcript

00:00Unfortunately when a decision was taken to terminate the driftnet salmon

00:05fishery and I lay a lot of the blame on Iceland at that time and Iceland said

00:10that they would make a major contribution financially towards the

00:15losses and we've never ever heard from them. A major contribution wasn't even

00:20one euro so I would like to hear your own views because there's no one better

00:24than yourselves to establish what stocks of salmon are there at the

00:30moment and should we be thinking of reverting to that and even with small

00:35tags and and quotas of salmon. Now I don't know what the scientific advice may put

00:42down a question to establish that from inland fisheries Ireland but it's

00:46important to have a view of your representatives so I'll just leave some

00:51time for you to answer the questions.

00:54Okay thank you Deputy. I might ask Seamus to deal with the pollock issue. The salmon

01:05thing it was it was it did have a huge impact on the island fishing instead

01:12especially in the Nagal. I fished salmon years ago but then the management of the

01:18fishery at the time wasn't great. The monofilament net was illegal to fish but it

01:25was legal to have it everywhere else so if you're going to have a law you should

01:30have the law. We used to fish you are 19 at the time in a small operation we would

01:34get it would take you away from lobster for that six weeks and the amount of fish

01:41that you were actually taking on the smaller boats was the seals would get just as

01:46much. I think it's 20 years next year since the driftnet fishery was closed and the

01:52stocks don't seem to have improved so it's obvious that the underlying issues

01:56haven't been addressed. Water quality barriers and rivers and salmon farms and

02:04river estuaries and kinopelagic bycatch are problems that seem to be haven't been

02:10addressed and so I just