The owner and skipper of a Co Donegal fishing boat has taken a High Court challenge to a decision by the Attorney General to prosecute him for alleged contravention of a fish quota.
Mr Frank Callanan SC, for Mr Cyril Harkin, St Peter's Park, Greencastle, owner of the Marliona, said his client was arrested off Hook Head, Co Waterford, on January 23rd last by a Sea Fisheries Protection Officer and found to have more that the prescribed one-monthly quota of one tonne of haddock.
Mr Harkin's case was that the customary means of notifying fishermen of such a limit was not observed by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. He had no idea he was infringing any limit placed on haddock.
Mr Justice Gilligan gave Mr Harkin leave to seek, in judicial review proceedings, an order prohibiting the Department from prosecuting Mr Harkin for an alleged contravention of the quota system.
He also granted him an interim injunction restraining the State proceeding with a prosecution. The matter was adjourned to October 8th.
The statutory instrument introducing the quota came into force on January 1st last.
Mr Callanan said that Mr Seán O'Donoghue, chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation Ltd, had claimed the Department's customary manner of notifying fishermen about monthly quota information was to convey it to the fishermen's three major fishing organisations, including the Killybeg organisation, and to publish the quotas in the Marine Times.
In this case, the Department failed to notify the Killybegs organisation of the haddock restriction, Mr Callanan said. The statutory instrument was not published in the Marine Times but had "mysteriously" appeared in the Irish Independent on December 23rd, 2002, two days before Christmas.
In an affidavit, Mr O'Donoghue said the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation would inform members when the monthly quotas were received from the Department. There had been an "unheralded departure" by the Department in relation to the fishing quotas that were set from January 2003.
He said the Department had misrepresented the situation because it had contacted the Killybegs company on January 2nd/ 3rd last in relation to fishery-management restrictions for the month but the haddock restriction was not included.
There clearly had been an oversight on the part of the Department, he said.