EU fish policy 'utterly corrupt'

Europe's fisheries control system is "crooked and utterly corrupt", it was claimed in the Dáil yesterday.

Green Party marine spokesman Eamon Ryan said it was "impossible for the Naval Service to ascertain the individual quota for a boat and therefore police the system".

Mr Ryan said boats from EU countries such as France, Spain and Belgium could openly fish in Irish waters, and the Naval Service could not police this because it did not know what the quotas of individual boats were. Marine scientists had told an Oireachtas committee that quota figures for the fisheries system were "plucked from thin air" and nobody believed the figures for fish landed.

Any "honest fisherman, anyone in the science community" knows that "this is a corrupt, uncontrollable system", Mr Ryan said and he asked what the Minister with responsibility for the marine would do about it. Minister of State for the Marine Pat "the Cope" Gallagher said he could not be held responsible for the Common Fisheries Policy, which did not provide for individual boat quotas.

"We have built quotas into our system, as far as is practicable, but that has not been adopted by all member States" and "the system pursued in Ireland is not corrupt". "No, but the entire European system is corrupt," Mr Ryan said.