One of the State's largest fisheries boards is resisting the centralisation of a new salmon conservation levy.
The South-Western Regional Fisheries Board wants the €100,000 or more it can expect to collect under the salmon "eco tax" in 2007 to remain in Cork and Kerry,
Salmon rod-angling licence fees are set to double in the new year, with the increase going to "rivers in need" throughout the State.
The overall fee for licences to fish in all districts will be €128, half of it in the form of the new conservation levy.
The fees will be collected from tourists as well as from resident anglers, and the 21-day licence popular with tourists is doubling in price to €48, with single district licences set to cost €60.
The levy is to be used to rehabilitate salmon rivers in accordance with a priority list managed by the Central Fisheries Board.
However, a recent meeting of the South-Western Regional Fisheries Board heard that the conservation tax collected in Cork could end up being spent on a river in Donegal. Aidan Barry, the board's chief executive, said that the new tax would be collected by the board and then sent to the Central Fisheries Board for "rivers in need" anywhere in the State, while the licence fee would remain in the region.
Fishing in the south-west region last year yielded €100,000 in licence fees alone, he said.
Board member Jerry Keating, who represents the Inland Fisheries Trust, said that salmon anglers would not have a problem paying the extra fees, especially when the money was for conservation, but he could not understand why the levy had to go outside the region.