The key advice on salmon is clear: drift-netting must cease; fishing industry arguments do not impress, write Tom Collins, John Malone and Padraic White, authors of the report calling for a ban, approved this week by the Cabinet
There has been a high level of discussion and media interest in the report prepared by the Independent Salmon Group, which was published recently. This is welcome, testifying to the salmon's special position in Irish life, and it reflects strongly held and sincere views throughout the sector - something which we also encountered in formulating the report.
The primary purpose of the report was to provide "scientific advice" on the management of wild salmon.
It is important to restate the key elements of this advice:
The overall exploitation in most districts should immediately decrease so that conservation limits can be consistently met;
Due to the different status of individual stocks within the stock complex, mixed-stock fisheries present particular threats to the status of individual stocks;
The most precautionary way to meet national and international objectives is to operate fisheries on individual river stocks which are shown to be within precautionary limits, ie, those stocks which are exceeding their conservation limits;
Fisheries operated in estuaries and rivers are more likely to fulfil these requirements.
This was the starting point of our work.
There was agreement among the several contributions to the consultation process, and indeed in the discussion since the publication of the report, on the catastrophic decline of the salmon stock. It was also agreed by all that this decline arose from a multiplicity of factors - over-exploitation, pollution, damage to habitat and poor water quality management.
It was also recognised that, despite the pioneering work initiated by Prof Noel Wilkins and his colleagues at NUI Galway in the mid-1990s, the decline in the stock had not been arrested.
Against this background, a central plank of our vision for the future was the conservation imperative. Given the migratory nature of the salmon, and the distinctiveness and critical importance of the individual river stock, the principle of a conservation strategy has to be one of single-stock management at the individual river level.
Clearly, this cannot be achieved while interceptory fishing of salmon returning to their spawning rivers is allowed to continue. The scientific advice available to us is clear - a complete cessation of such fishing is required. This is reinforced by the persistent pressure from powerful international sources, including, in particular, the European Commission.
We were impressed with the arguments put to us by the commercial fishermen of the economic and social importance of salmon fishing in peripheral coastal communities. We were also struck by the sense of powerlessness which they conveyed to us.
We were less convinced, however, with their arguments concerning the heritage dimension of the industry, considering that it is only in relatively recent years that drift-netting has become the main form of harvesting salmon.
We devoted a lot of attention to formulating a hardship fund, both at an individual level and also at community level, which appears to be generally recognised as a fair and reasonable response.
Some questions have been raised about the scale of the surplus of salmon returning to the rivers on the termination of the interceptory fishing at sea.
The best scientific advice available to us shows that 10 rivers which otherwise would have been below the conservation limit should now exceed it, and that many others, while not exceeding this limit, will at least benefit from increased returns.
The report recognises that the management and allocation of the "new" surplus is a critical issue. It therefore enunciated the key principles for policy decision which should underpin this strategy. These were that it should:
Be predicated on the assumption that this is a public good;
Recognise the group processors, restaurateurs and retailers who have traditionally accessed wild salmon from the commercial sector for a continued source of supply;
Accommodate the interests of the tourism sector, given the potential of international angling.
The report is clear also on the principle that there can be no a priori claim to this surplus and that the beneficiaries should pay in proportion to use.
The formulation of a model for the allocation of this surplus will require detailed consideration at managerial level, embracing a series of regulatory, implementation and distributional challenges.
It would be a real sign of progress if, as suggested by Prof Wilkins in his article in The Irish Times of October 27th, we have now arrived at the point where we can turn our attention to the optimum use of this surplus in the national interest.
Prof Tom Collins is dean of the faculty of social science and head of education at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth; John Malone was secretary-general of the Department of Agriculture and Food from 1997 to 2004 and is a member of the board of An Bord Bia, the Irish food board; Padraic White was chairman of the national strategy review group on the European Union's common fisheries policy from 1998 to 2003