The authorities believe illegal catches are now systemic in the Irish fishing industry writes Stephen Collins, Political Correspondent
One night late last year fisheries officers pounced on a small port on the west coast of Ireland. They found two large Irish trawlers unloading a huge catch of mackerel into a fleet of lorries waiting on the quayside. The illegal landing of the valuable catch in the middle of the night and the waiting lorries did not surprise the fisheries officers who are well used to this behaviour.
What did surprise them was the identity of the trawlers because, according to satellite tracking equipment, the boats were 25 miles offshore.
What an investigation showed was that the satellite tracking equipment on the trawlers had been tampered with to give a false signal.
Under EU regulations all trawlers are obliged to carry a device, known among fishermen as a "blue box", which gives out a GPS signal and discloses where a trawler is at a given time.
The tampering with "blue boxes" was just the latest development in the continuing war of wits between the fisheries protection authorities and some trawler owners.
The deployment of fleets of up to 20 lorries to spirit away illegal catches to fish processing plants 100 miles and more away is a feature of the fishing war.
Each lorry is usually driven by a number of people to break the chain of evidence and make prosecution impossible.
The first driver will take the lorry far away from the port and leave it at a layby. Another driver is paid to pick it up and bring the haul close to the processing plant and a third then collects it for the last leg of the journey.
The scale of the battle over illegal fishing has escalated dramatically over the last few years and the fisheries authorities are losing. The authorities believe Illegal fishing is now systemic in the Irish industry, that fish stocks are being destroyed and tens of millions of euro are being illegally earned by a relatively small group of rich trawler owners with enormous financial muscle.
The owners also appear to have a lot of political muscle. This week the Sea Fisheries and Marine Jurisdiction Bill, 2005, was again derailed on its way through a Dáil committee on Tuesday by a Fianna Fáil backbench revolt.
It was the third time the Bill, which is designed to protect Irish fish stocks with a range of penalties for illegal fishing and the establishment of an independent seafood control manager, was blocked by the combined weight of Fianna Fáil and the main Opposition parties.
Only Eamon Ryan of the Green Party and Fiona O'Malley of the PDs backed Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources Noel Dempsey in his efforts to get to grips with the systemic illegality in the industry.
However, after further consideration yesterday the Bill has been put back on the agenda and the committee stage will resume today.
With over 200 amendments due to be debated Mr Dempsey will have his work cut out to get an effective piece of legislation on to the statute book, but he has shown great commitment to protecting the country's remaining fish stocks.
Those who oppose the Bill have portrayed it as a battle between the small, hard-working fisherman and a bureaucratic State apparatus.
In fact, it is a struggle between a group of very rich trawler owners and the authorities who are trying to preserve a valuable natural resource, protect the environment and save the Irish taxpayer from hefty EU fines.
The latest technological devices, expensive legal advice and raw political power have been deployed successfully by the fishing industry to defeat the efforts of the State to enforce the law.
Mr Dempsey has tried to explain the consequences for the Irish taxpayer in EU fines, never mind the destruction of the stocks, if a proper regulatory regime is not introduced, but his backbenchers don't appear to be concerned.
Opponents of the Bill have focused on the demand for administrative fines rather than criminal sanctions for serious breaches of the fishing laws.
However, Attorney General Rory Brady has explained that under Irish and British law it is not possible to introduce effective administrative fines which would act as a deterrent.
Serious fines of hundreds of thousands of euro, and the power to confiscate catch and equipment, cannot be imposed administratively under the terms of our Constitution.
The Minister is adamant that strong penalties are required, given the tens of millions of euro that are at stake. The current law, which already has criminal penalties, has become unworkable due to loopholes exposed in legal challenges.
The scale of illegal fishing has been shown up in an ongoing investigation into illegal landings in Scotland which has discovered that over €40 million worth of illegal Irish fish had been landed at two Scottish ports over a four-year period.
Fisheries authorities in Scotland were puzzled at to why Irish trawlers were bypassing the northwest coast of Ireland and steaming all the way around the tip of Scotland to land their catches.
The answer was that most of the fish were being landed through secret pipes under the quays at the two ports and were being processed and shipped out illegally. The EU Commission has been informed of the details of the Scottish inquiry and prosecutions are pending.
Meanwhile, the commission is expected to cut this year's Irish mackerel quota by the amount of fish illegally landed in Scotland last year.
The Irish pelagic fleet fishes for mackerel and herring. The fleet is made up of about 30 ultra-modern and expensive large trawlers. They are legally entitled to catch about 20 per cent of the entire EU quota.
The conventional image of the Irish fleet being composed of little trawlers competing with big Spanish boats is misleading. The Irish pelagic fleet is probably the most modern and efficient in the world. The problem is that some trawlers continually flout the law.
The whitefish fleet off the south and east coast, with about 200 boats, approximates more to the traditional image of the Irish fishing fleet, but here too there has been a considerable degree of modernisation over the past decade, helped by State grants.
After a series of fishing tragedies involving small boats a decade ago, the State provided €45 million to modernise the fleet. The problem here is that the main whitefish species like cod, hake and monkfish have been over-fished by Irish and foreign vessels and the fishery is close to collapse.
A study by the Marine Institute last year found that there was massive under-recording of catches of the valuable whitefish species, with EU quotas being breached by a factor of six to eight times. At this rate of over-fishing, southern costal waters will soon be as denuded of whitefish as the Irish Sea.
Some fishermen have begun to realise the consequences of the destruction of the country's fish stocks and have begun to tip off the authorities about the illegal practices.
However, the law as it stands is incapable of being implemented effectively.
For instance, in 2004 there were just 26 successful prosecutions in Ireland compared to 3,153 in Spain. If Mr Dempsey fails in his efforts to get his Bill through the Dáil in reasonable shape, the long-term outlook for the fishing industry is bleak.