The Forum draws together a wide spectrum of experience and expertise from the fishing industry and the marine environment, and has been charged with developing a long term strategy to develop a sustainable and profitable future for the sector.
In her address to the Forum at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, the Minister said: “When I addressed the Assembly on the problems facing the fishing sector at the end of April, I said that my objective was to help the industry to achieve a profitable future while ensuring that stocks are fished in a sustainable way. This remains my objective and the purpose of inviting the Forum here to-day is to start the urgent work to find a short, medium and long term solution to the problem and develop a way forward that ensures the fishing sectors survival.
“We need to develop a long-term strategy to achieve a profitable and sustainable future. It needs to deal with maximizing the return for each ton of fish landed, fragmentation and lack of probability in the sector, the development of management approaches that reflect local needs while complying with EU regulations and how to build an improved and productive relationship between the industry, fishery scientists, managers and other stakeholders.”
The Minister added: “I want to see our fishing fleet operating more efficiently and being less vulnerable to changing market conditions — a fleet that operates in an environmentally sustainable manner and which places greater emphasis on product quality.”
The Minister also referred to the assistance available under the European Fisheries Fund (EFF). She said: “We need to prioritise and target the £28million of support available under the EFF and to ensure that the funding is used wisely to achieve a profitable future for the sector.”
Notes to Editors:
1. The establishment of the Fisheries Forum was announced by the Minister in a statement to the Assembly on 28 April.
The role of the Forum is to recommend to the Department a long term strategy for the fishing industry which:
- balances fishing effort and fleet capacity against the available fishing resources to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry and fish stocks and the marine environment;
- addresses the need for restructuring and modernisation;
- identifies measures which can be taken to respond to the increasing fuel prices and which will improve fuel efficiency in the fleet;
- identifies measures which will improve competitiveness, profitability and co-operation across the different sectors of the industry; and
- agrees how the funding available under European Fisheries Fund should be prioritised.
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