An ecological crisis is threatening the survival of the Barrow as one of the country's great salmon rivers, the Southern Regional Fisheries board, anglers and scientists have claimed.
Even the proposed ban on drift-netting at sea may not be enough to prevent "terminal decline" due to over-fishing, pollution and an unexplained increase in mortality rates among salmon while migrating through the Atlantic.
Bob Wemyss, secretary of the South East Salmon Federation, said stocks on the river are "dangerously low", constituting a crisis for the river.
An estimated 11,000 spawning salmon are needed annually to maintain a sustainable conservation level but the latest figures suggest that only about 2,000 returned last year.
The Southern Regional Fisheries Board, which is charged with conserving and managing fish stocks in the Barrow, said the situation is so serious that all salmon fishing - both recreational angling and commercial fishing in the Waterford estuary - should be immediately shut down.
The board's chief executive Brian Sheerin said poor water quality resulting from years of pollution, untreated sewage, and intensive agriculture is adding to the crisis.
Local anglers claim there has also been a significant reduction in the number and range of insects such as the mayfly and sedge fly which hatch on the riverbed and are an important food source for fish.
Dr Niall Ó Maoiléidigh, a scientist with the State's Marine Institute, said Ireland should draw lessons from other European rivers such as the Thames and the Rhine where millions are being spent to restore lost salmon stocks.
"We are on the brink. We have reached a critical point and are in danger of losing salmon rivers like the Barrow," he said.
Last month the institute, which runs a national salmon tagging and tag recovery programme, released hatchery-bred smolts (young salmon) into the Barrow for the first time at Clashganny, outside the village of Borris on the Carlow/Kilkenny border.
The 8,000 fish, which have been tagged with a coded microchip, began a journey to the north Atlantic with some expected to travel as far as the Faroe Islands or Greenland before returning to Ireland next year. But only about 8 per cent will survive the round trip and only a fraction - "1 or 2 per cent" - will actually make it back upriver to spawn.
The Government has set up a committee to consider the National Salmon Commission's advice for a ban on drift-netting and compensation for the commercial fishermen whose livelihoods would be affected. The 120-mile (193km) River Barrow rises in the Slieve Bloom Mountains and flows through Athy, Carlow, Leighlinbridge, Bagenalstown, Goresbridge, Borris, and Graiguenamanagh, before reaching the tide at St Mullins and on to the Waterford estuary.
It is renowned as one of the greatest salmon rivers in
Ireland.
The 16th century Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser, in his epic Faerie Queen, described it as "the goodly Barrow, which doth hoord Great heaps of Salmons in his deep bosome".
