A Supreme Court judgment on tuna fishing may invalidate some 95 per cent of all current fisheries regulations in Irish waters.
The Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources is studying the judgment handed down by the Supreme Court on Wednesday in a judicial review taken by Kerry fisherman, Mr Vincent Browne.
Last year, the High Court found that an EU regulation banning drift-netting for tuna had not been properly transposed into Irish law and the State had appealed this to the Supreme Court.
Mr Greg Casey, solicitor for Mr Browne, said the ruling this week indicated the Minister for the Marine was no longer entitled to make regulations as indictable under section 223A of the Fisheries Act.
"This affects all fishery regulations implemented under EU direction, invalidates statutory instruments made under this section and this will apply to all boats fishing illegally in Irish waters , whether Irish or foreign," Mr Casey told The Irish Times.
The Supreme Court also found the Minister was not entitled to regulate outside the 200-mile limit, where Mr Browne had been fishing for tuna. The Minister may now have to amend the current legislation to reintroduce the current ban on drift-netting on the high seas.
In a separate development yesterday, a former fishermen's leader, Mr Joey Murrin, warned that Ireland's top fishing port of Killybegs, Co Donegal, may be in "terminal decline" unless there was urgent State intervention at EU level. Mr Murrin, who retired as chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation three years ago, says that "a good cat would eat what is being landed" in the south Donegal harbour at present.
The same fate awaited southern ports where the bulk of the Irish whitefish fleet was now concentrated, unless "new thinking and hard decisions" were taken on technical conservation measures, he said.
Ironically, Killybegs is benefiting from a €50 million harbour development, agreed during the final weeks of the previous government. "When I was head of the KFO, I had 30 whitefish boats fishing in Donegal Bay, but now there are none," Mr Murrin said.
The port is also home to the multi-million euro pelagic (mackerel/herring) fleet, which has largely escaped some of the recent EU restrictions.
The Donegal whitefish fleet, which forms the backbone of the Irish fleet, has been hard hit by a new EU "days at sea " measure agreed last December. The measure restricting fishing effort to 11 days a month was introduced to protect cod stocks in western waters, principally off the British coast, but the designated fishery area extends to Irish north-west ports. Larger boats have moved south, while smaller boats face a bleak future.
The threat to the Irish Box is also still unresolved. To compound the crisis, fish prices have also collapsed - largely due to the slump in tourism on the European continent.
It is understood that Spanish boats are barely fetching €3 a kilo for prime hake, caught by long-line, which is less than half what the fish is normally worth at source. Mr Murrin said the recovery of whitefish stocks must be paramount and fishing in areas where there is evidence of juvenile stocks should be banned. Discarding of undersized fish must also cease and all fish caught should be landed regardless of size. Mesh sizes should also be increased immediately, he said.
"The Department of the Marine should expose the hypocrisy of the European Commission's conservation policies," Mr Murrin said. "However, Irish fishermen are not totally innocent and we all have to take a share of pain."