Dingle fisherman takes govt to EU Court of Justice

DINGLE fisherman Michael Flannery is to challenge a key piece of Irish government fisheries policy in the European Court of Justice after winning a landmark ruling in the Supreme Court on Friday.

Michael, who is on the board of the Irish Fish Producers Organisation and Killybegs Fishermen’s Association member Pat Fitzpatrick from the Aran Islands are challenging the way the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority (IFPA) applies prawn fishery conservation measures in an area around the Porcupine Bank, officially known as FU16.

The rich Porcupine prawn fishery is highly regulated to protect stocks and prevent over-fishing. In the decade up to 2017 fishing in the area was controlled by an agreed system of quotas and temporary closure of part of the area during the annual prawn spawning season. Marine Institute surveys during this period found that prawn stocks were increasing, which proved the conservation measures were working.

However, the SFPA claimed Irish boats were under-reporting their prawn catch in FU16 and in 2017 the Irish government abandoned the quota system and instead calculated the amount of prawns caught by boats based on the amount of time they spent in the area, which extends about 200 miles into the Atlantic from just west of the Blaskets.

“Fishermen initiated the [original] conservation plan, which was agreed with Dept of Marine, to fish outside of a spawning area on the Porcupine Bank where there’s a very high concentration of prawn,” Michael Flannery told The Kerryman this week. “The plan worked well and there were no, or very few, infringements by fishermen but the Department claimed there was widespread misreporting of prawn catches… They were saying we were fiddling the books and that all the boats fishing prawn on the Porcupine were breaking the rules.”

In 2018 Michael and Pat Fitzpatrick lost a High Court action challenging the government’s new conservation rules but even then they were already feeling the effects of the ‘time spent’ restrictions.

“The fishing restrictions wrecked the season in 2017 and 2018 and put boat owners on the breadline,” said Michael.

Taking their case to court also involved massive financial risk for Michael and Pat Fitzpatrick. “Last year we were looking at €400,000 a man until the fishing organisations divvied up – and they’re broke so we couldn’t even be sure that they would be able to pay the legal costs,” Michael added.

Following the failure of their High Court action Michael and Pat Fitzpatrick lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court, where they argued that the government was mis-interpreting and misusing EU law and applied to have the matter referred to the European Court of Justice.

The government attempted to block the application but on Friday ruled in favour of the two fishermen, saying that the matter was “of general interest for the uniform application of EU law”.

“Essentially what we are saying is that the government has plenty of regulations at their disposal without making new rules. What we want is for EU rules to apply to Irish fishermen the same way they apply to everybody else,”