Owners of five Irish shellfish vessels have called on the Government to walk away from a 40-year-old treaty which allows Irish and Northern Irish fishing vessels to work in each other's territorial waters.
The owners of the five vessels say that the Voisinage Agreement which dates back to 1964 has been abused in recent years by the Northern Irish authorities. The owners claim that "dozens" of vessels from Wales, Holland and Germany have been allowed to register in Belfast, giving them access to tens of thousands of valuable mussel seed in Irish waters along the east coast.
The five vessel owners marked the first day of the 2005 mussel seed season last week by fishing north of the border off the Co Down coast, and were boarded and cautioned by officials from the North's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Dard). One vessel was then detained by Department of Marine officials on its return to Arklow, Co Wicklow.
A department spokesman said the matter will be referred to the Attorney General's office.
The owners from ports in Donegal, Waterford, Limerick and Wexford said that they had invested over €20 million in new boats this year to fish mussel seed. They said that the Government had neglected its duty to protect the seed beds and a €30 million industry by not monitoring the activities of British-registered vessels off the Irish coast each year.
A spokeswoman for Dard said that several vessels were boarded on Tuesday at Skullmartin off the Co Down coast. "Whilst the agreement allows access to fish, any activity which did not comply with licence conditions for that fishery will have been recorded and details forwarded to the licensing authorities for appropriate action", she said. The spokeswoman said that no "flag of convenience" vessels had been granted licences by Dard. The Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources said that the Minister of State, Pat the Cope Gallagher, was fully committed to working with the Northern Irish authorities on management of mussel seed beds.
The industry had been invited to nominate representatives to a joint management group, but had so far failed to do this, a spokesman said. However, the "door was still open" for representation. The department had also invested €6.7 million towards new mussel dredgers valued at €17.5 million, the spokesman said.