A Mayo fishery owner has initiated legal action against the Government over the identification of a virus in a fish farm in Clew Bay.
Mr Kieran Thompson, owner of Newport House and fishery in Newport, Co Mayo, has also filed a complaint with the European Commission over grant approval of the farm, Seastream Ltd, where positive identification of the virus was recorded in rainbow trout. To date, there has been no clinical outbreak of the disease.
A day after the infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) virus was detected, a reported 100 fish escaped from it. A proportion made their way to the Newport river, where Mr Thompson's fishery is located, and attempts were made to recover them.
Mr Thompson has initiated his action against Seastream Ltd, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands and the Attorney General. His legal representative states that the fish farm is not licensed.
Mr Thompson states that the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources is in breach of its statutory duty in continuing to permit the farm to operate on foot of an expired licence, in allowing fish to escape and in causing "ever-increasing damage" to the stock of wild salmon and sea trout in Mr Thompson's fishery.
"In addition, the Department allowed Seastream to continue its unlicensed trade even after the detection of ISA and apparently with no application of controls to prevent the escape of infected fish into the wild," he states. The fish farm reported an escape of 9,000 fish last September, but "local sources" claim that the figure could be as high as 60,000 fish.
In the formal complaint to the European Commission, Mr Thompson says that the farm is in breach of EU environmental directives and is operating without a valid aquaculture licence.
He claims that Bord Iascaigh Mhara was in breach of EU rules in awarding the company a grant last autumn. He has also asked the Commission to ensure that the company is not given a new licence.
The Irish Salmon Growers' Association, which represents Seastream Ltd, said that Seastream's licence was being renewed under the normal procedure for fish farms. There had as yet been no clinical outbreak of the ISA virus, and there were no sick fish on the farm, the ISGA said.
It was very happy with the current investigation, fish were being harvested, and the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources was operating "entirely appropriately" and using best practice in terms of management.
Late last week, an international laboratory in Norway confirmed that there was "strong evidence" of the presence of the virus at the Mayo farm. However, it has asked the Marine Institute to carry out more scientific investigations on infectious salmon anaemia - a virus which has hit fish farms in Scotland, Norway and Canada in recent years.
Positive indication of ISA was isolated during routine testing by the Marine Institute at the farm's site on Clew Bay on August 1st, and the escape occurred the day after, during harvesting. This was followed by a second positive result at the farm's site at Doughill, near Mulrany in Co Mayo.
The Department has already stated that it had initiated full disease-control measures at the farm, and harvesting had been accelerated. It also said that experience in other countries shows that the virus in aquaculture farms had not been linked to any occurrence of the virus among wild fish. Yesterday, a spokesman said that it had received Mr Thompson's correspondence and would respond in due course.
