DUP MEP Diane Dodds has reacted with dismay to the latest pronouncement from Europe concerning the local fishing industry. Only a few days after proposing reduced fishing opportunities for much of Northern Ireland’s fishing fleet, the EU’s Fisheries Council meeting in Luxembourg approved the new Fisheries Control Regulation, which will be applicable from the 1st January 2010. Commenting following the announcement, Mrs. Dodds, who is a member of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, said:
"Yet again the European Commission has ignored evidence based advice and has forced a Regulation upon our fishing industry that has the potential to cause further hardship for our fishermen, by applying rules that are unworkable. Fishermen from Northern Ireland and across Europe had worked hard to convince the European Commission that ‘Margin of Tolerance’ rules were impractical and at the same time propose alternatives that were based on evidence.
Our fishermen invited the Eurocrats out on their trawlers to experience for themselves how unworkable the proposal for a 10% Margin of Tolerance was because of the difficulty of estimating small amounts of by-catch species to that level of accuracy. The European Commission ignored the invitation and as a result of this latest decision the industry fears that infringements of the regulation will be unavoidable.
This is wrong. The fishing industry took a very responsible approach to this matter, but yet again their efforts have been dismissed. I call on the DARD Minister and her United Kingdom colleagues who will be responsible for implementing these rules to work closely with our fishermen to insure these new rules are applied using common sense.”
