Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome to the meeting Mr Paul Leeman from Seafresh NI Limited. Thank you for coming at such short notice on a Monday morning. The floor is yours.

Mr Paul Leeman (Seafresh NI Ltd): Thank you, Chair and Committee, for giving me the opportunity to address you.

The first that we knew about the proposed closed period was when a video of this Committee began to circulate on social media on Sunday week past. When I watched the video, I was shocked, especially when I heard the answers to some of the questions. One question was about the economic impact of what was being proposed, and you were told that it would have very little impact. You cannot close down an industry for one third of the year and not cause severe economic impact. Common sense dictates that, and yet that is exactly what is being proposed. Furthermore, you cannot just give 12 days' notice of any proposed closure. We have advance orders for the next six to 12 months. What are we to tell our customers? I spoke to one customer the other day, and I will not repeat what he said to me. We are not the only ones; the other processors are in exactly the same position. Our customers will be forced to look elsewhere for periwinkles, and we may never get them back. If we do, we may be selling for a lower price, which will have a further financial impact on us.

The other group of people economically impacted are the gatherers. I have been inundated with phone calls since last Monday, asking whether I knew about this and whether anything can be done. Those people depend on gathering to subsidise their incomes, yet they have been given 12 days' notice. I wonder whether the architects of the legislation would be happy to lose their salaries for the next three months with such inadequate notice. Many fishermen also use this fishery when they cannot get to sea, so it is vital to them.

As I said in my email, we split the year into three parts. January to April is the time when what we call "jumbo winkles" come up the shore with the colder weather and the spring tides. It is fairly lucrative for gatherers. May to August is a different story: there are not as many winkles on the beaches because a green weed covers them, so a lot of pickers do not bother. The picture might be slightly skewed in the summer months because there is more daylight and there are two tides. People might be under the impression that there are more pickers on the beach, but there are not. The final third of the year, from September to December, with the Christmas and New Year period, is when prices peak.

I have mentioned the need for regulations because we do not have this blanket need anywhere else in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. There are some small areas, such as marine conservation areas, that have closed periods — Lyme Regis in Dorset is one of them — but they go for the period from May to September. I have spoken to processors in the Republic. They say that there is no way that they would have regulations like this, as they would totally decimate the industry. That is what will happen here.

The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) survey was carried out in Strangford lough. I am not disputing any of its findings, but they may not relate to the outer lough in any way because that happens with other shellfish species. For example, scallops spawn in the Irish Sea in the summer whereas, on the north coast, they spawn around March and September time. The science is, therefore, incomplete, so it is no criticism of that report.

I return to the length of notice. The video circulated on the Sunday evening, and we first received notice from the Department on the Monday that the closure was happening. I can think of no other case in which people would be given 12 days' notice of something that had been so long planned and told, "Right, that's it stopped. That's your income finished". It is totally scandalous. I am amazed that you can even do that within the law.

I suggest that we defer the closure period and put the issue in the fisheries management plan, which is to conclude at the end of next year. That would give time for sensible discussion. Other measures are being proposed to do with the periwinkle fishery. Why the Department has just taken this one measure on its own baffles me; it baffles everybody, to be honest.

I ask the Committee to consider deferring it. We have the support of the fish producers' organisations etc. That is it.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you so much, Paul. The Committee does not have the power to defer, but, on the basis of the evidence that is submitted today, it has the power to issue a prayer of annulment, which would lead to a debate and a vote in the Chamber next week. However, at this stage, we have not done that. Today is about gathering evidence to make an informed decision.

I will pick up on a couple of points to bottom this out, if you do not mind, and I will probably ask the departmental officials the same question. Is it your understanding that the survey that led to the action was based solely on Strangford lough, which, given that it is a site of immense, internationally recognised conservation and importance, is not the same as any other waterway that we have on our coast?

Mr Leeman: Yes, 100%.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): OK. You also said that you believed that something could be done if there was more consultation. I quite liked that, because the Committee is interested in conservation and the environment. To be fair to the Department, the consultation happened in 2022, so this is not an absolute bolt from the blue. However, the communication of information two weeks ago and the speed at which things have been mobilised certainly makes it seem like a bolt from the blue. Do you have any thoughts on mitigations and angles that the Minister and the Department might be able to take? You pointed to Lyme Regis,which uses a different calendar for opening. Do you want to put anything on the record in that regard?

Mr Leeman: As I mentioned in the email, if there is to be a ban, the ban period in Lyme Regis is the one that we most favour. Lyme Regis say that they are doing that for birds that are nesting on the beach. They feel that that is the best time of year not to disturb the birds, so the ban is not necessarily to do with spawning. The other important thing — again, we are looking at a report that was done for Strangford lough as opposed to the whole of Northern Ireland — is that the report mentioned, as you did Chair at the first Committee meeting on this, that periwinkles are abundant. The industry has not been regulated. I know 70-year-olds whose grannies were prosecuted for gathering periwinkles, so the industry has been around for probably 100 years, and it is still thriving. If we were to mitigate the loss, it would be to try to have the ban in the period May to September.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I have one question on the abundance piece. Obviously, the word "abundant" appears in the Hansard report of the previous evidence session on the subject, but there is probably a context for that. The Department is keen on the period it has proposed because it is spawning season and for other reasons. As someone in the industry who looks at the situation daily, do you agree with the assertion that there is an abundance of periwinkles? Do you see any deterioration in their quality, number or size?

Mr Leeman: There are more processors now, so there is probably the same amount coming in but they are spread among a higher number of processors. We are not necessarily happy with that, but that is competition and we have to deal with it. There are as many coming in as there were.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Four hundred tons was mentioned: do you agree with that?

Mr Leeman: No, but I do not disagree with it. I can neither prove nor disprove it.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Do you have an estimate from a producer's perspective?

Mr Leeman: I would have thought that it was somewhere around 250 tons, but it is a figure that I am —.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That goes back to the thinking that perhaps we need some sort of regulation for, among a number of reasons, the protection of the species and the role that they play in the ecology. Are you against some sort of regulation?

Mr Leeman: I am open to talking about regulation. I took part in the survey in 2022 and spent a long time speaking to someone from the Department whose name eludes me. I must have been on the phone to him for 45 to 50 minutes. From what I can see, I wasted my time, because none of it came through. As I said, that stopped, and I heard nothing more about any closures. Singling out a closure without any of the other measures does not make sense to me, but we would be happy to talk.

I have been involved in the fishing industry for far too long. I have been a representative for over 35 years. I chair the Scallop Association, and I have chaired the Northern Ireland Fish Producers' Organisation (NIFPO). The Scallop Association, in particular, has been to the forefront of conservation in the entire UK. Most places in the UK followed what we were doing. I am not against conservation; I am all for it. We want to preserve the industry. We are the people who are invested in the industry.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I will bring in other members. In case anybody thinks that we are being rude, this is a plenary day, so, although we have this session this morning, there will be other demands on members. I want to keep things as punchy and as accurate as possible.

Mr McAleer: Thank you very much for your presentation this morning. I am looking at my note from the meeting in December and the Hansard report of it. It states that 86% of people were in support of the 2022 public consultation. Did you participate in that public consultation?

Mr Leeman: We participated, but we were in the 14%.

Mr McAleer: You were opposed to it. The ban in England is from 15 May to September. Why are the dates in England different from those being proposed here? I also asked that question at the time.

Mr Leeman: The scientific report from AFBI states that periwinkles spawn between January and April, but I emphasise again that that survey was done in Strangford lough. It is not necessarily the same around the whole coast of Northern Ireland. A blanket ban does not make sense.

Going back to the example that I gave, scallops spawn in the Irish Sea in the summertime, whereas, on the north coast, there are spawns in March and September. There are two spawns up there. It does not necessarily follow that that report applies to the whole of Northern Ireland.

Mr McAleer: I note that the French market is big. Is it correct that the industry here is worth around £3 million?

Mr Leeman: Yes. That is probably accurate enough, but it is based on the selling-on price into France.

Mr McAleer: Would the proposed ban place the industry here at a disadvantage compared with that in the South of Ireland and across the water?

Mr Leeman: A huge disadvantage. You will not go into a restaurant in France and not see periwinkles on a plate somewhere. They come out in a seafood platter or whatever it is. The market there is huge. Obviously, our customers need to get them or they will lose their customers to supermarkets and the restaurant trade. Our customers will go to the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales to get them. When we come out of the period of the ban, we will try to get the customers back, but they will not necessarily leave their existing suppliers; customers who buy that sort of thing have a fair bit of loyalty. They may just decide to stay, or we may have to try to lure them back at a lower price, which means that we cannot pay the current price to the gatherers.

Mr McAleer: Thank you, Paul.

Miss McIlveen: Colleagues have asked a number of the questions that I was planning to ask. Thank you for your presentation this morning, Paul. Will you talk me through the discussions that you have had with the Department from the 2022 consultation to now?

Mr Leeman: Yes. As I said, I had a long conversation with a gentleman whose name eludes me. I gave him the details of the industry from my perspective. There was one fisheries management plan that mentioned periwinkles. Harry Wick and Adam Holland had involvement in that but said that they were not really involved with periwinkles, because it is slightly different: the Fish Producers' Organisation deals with people with boats, whereas the periwinkles are caught by gatherers. I was on the Zoom meeting, and I said, "Well, I am. It is important to us". The next conversation that I recollect having was one last Wednesday with Patrick Crothers that started off as a fairly robust conversation but ended up being quite amicable; Patrick always has that way of affecting people. That was it; there was nothing in between.

There was no sign of a closure coming, and certainly not with a 12-day notice period.

Miss McIlveen: We have talked about the difference between what you believe the amount of stock to be and what the Department detailed when it spoke to the Committee. When gatherers bring stock to you, do you take any record of where the stock has come from? I am curious to know the percentage of stock that has come from Strangford lough and the percentage that has come from other areas.

Mr Leeman: Unfortunately not. We know what area it comes from; for example, the outer Ards peninsula. We tend to get very little from Strangford lough because the periwinkles there have barnacles on them, which most of our customers do not want. Therefore, we do not deal a lot with anything from Strangford lough. Our stock is mostly from the outer Ards area.

Miss McIlveen: Were there to be a restriction, would there be an impact if it was just in Strangford lough?

Mr Leeman: There would be an impact, but it would be much lower from our perspective. There may other buyers that buy in Strangford. I cannot argue against the science in Strangford lough, but it does not necessarily relate to outside Strangford lough. There would be an impact but a much lesser one.

Miss McIlveen: I am thinking that way just because AFBI did that work in 2022 and because, on the mainland, there is a small restriction in the Dorset area that is, obviously, for particular environmental reasons.

Mr Leeman: Yes. There may be small restrictions in areas other than Dorset, but nowhere has a blanket ban.

Miss McIlveen: Thanks very much.

Mr Blair: Thank you, Paul, for the presentation and the information that you have provided today and previously. I have a few questions. Obviously, we can discuss with departmental officials the differences between the proposals here and the outworkings of measures that have been implemented in GB. I assure you that we will do that.

I am trying to square the conservation argument with the arguments from the industry sector. I will be upfront with you: there is a conservation need here, or we would not be in this position. I want to clarify the difference between the areas and the stocks and all of that. Do you accept that, if the periwinkles in Strangford need to be protected, the chances are that they also need to be protected and conserved elsewhere to some degree?

Mr Leeman: No, not necessarily.

Mr Blair: Why?

Mr Leeman: If we look at other species in Strangford lough, we see that the area is totally enclosed. It is a totally different ecosystem. I am not saying that we would not need to do something outside the Strangford lough area, but just because something is done there that does not necessarily mean that we have to it.

Mr Blair: OK. There is another obvious question. I am not suggesting that you have been responsible for any increase. If there has been an increase in processors, as you described, that in turn must also mean an increase, however substantial, in the number of gatherers. In an unregulated sector, surely that growth in itself will have a significant impact on stocks.

Mr Leeman: That there are more processors does not impact on the number of gatherers. The gatherers go to the other processors.

Mr Blair: They are gathering more, perhaps.

Mr Leeman: No, not necessarily. There is the same number of pickers, but they are spreading it around. As I said, we are not necessarily getting as much, because there is more competition. If we were buying x amount so many years ago, it does not mean that we are buying that amount now. The same amount is coming in.

Mr Blair: On the economic aspect, some correspondence that we have mentions supplementing rather than providing an income. What percentage of a person's earnings does that supplementary income make up? Also, of the jobs that are at stake, how many are full-time versus those that provide a supplementary income and are a part-time or subsidiary activity?

Mr Leeman: I cannot give you an indication of the percentage. That is down to each individual, and I do not know their personal circumstances or what they earn outside their work as a picker. There are probably around 80 to 100 pickers for the Northern Ireland coast. The figure for full-time pickers is small, because it is not a job where there is guaranteed work. As I said, fishermen would often use the fishery if they cannot get out to sea. We just had a period of bad easterly winds, and there are more to come tomorrow. They will use it to supplement their income or lack thereof.

Mr Blair: Thank you for that.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Members have no other questions.

Thank you very much, Paul; I really appreciate you giving of your time. On the back of John's question, I will ask this in order to get absolute clarity: if this were to come in for a third of the year, how would the fiscal impact and the impact on employment manifest itself?

Mr Leeman: It is hard to totally define that. The big question is this: after we lose our customers because we cannot supply to them, will we get them back? Are we talking simply about a third of the year's income being lost? If so, which third will it be? As I broke it earlier, there are three parts to the year: two thirds are lucrative, and the middle part is not.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Are you saying that you could lose the most lucrative part with the jumbo periwinkles?

Mr Leeman: Exactly. The tides are perfect at the moment, and there are easterly winds, so I imagine that we will be out this week. It is not an easy job. You have to hand it to the pickers.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I am sure that it is not easy. I would not like to have been out doing it last week or the week before, given the weather that we have had.

Mr Leeman: They will have been out then. They will have been out when there was frost as well. The frost brings the jumbos up to the shore, apparently, and they will have been down there picking, with their hands in the water to lift the stuff out. It is a hardy business.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, Paul. You are welcome to stay for the subsequent sessions. You can sit in the Public Gallery.

Mr Leeman: OK. Thank you for your time.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Brian Chambers is here from the Anglo Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organisation (ANIFPO).

Mr Brian Chambers (Anglo Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organisation): Can you hear me, Chair?

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I can hear you, but I cannot see you. You have the Committee's attention. There you are now.

Mr Chambers: Apologies. I had some difficulties getting online. Due to the short notice, I cannot be there in person.

I did not hear most of Paul Leeman's evidence, but I am sure that I will reiterate a lot of what he said. Where I am coming from — one of the producer organisations (POs) — is that we represent more vessels, obviously, but it has been drawn to my attention recently that a lot of fishermen supplement their income by gathering periwinkles, especially during bad weather. I was not involved in the FMP for periwinkles. As I said, we tend to represent vessels, but, with the short notice of a potential ban, a few of my guys have raised the issue of how much that will affect them.

As we all know and as I say all the time, there is no one more invested in conservation than fishermen, and we have seen that with lobsters and scallops, as Paul said. In many cases, the fishermen lead from the front, whether it is by increasing the size of the crabs they catch or bringing in a curfew, and that gives an indication of how invested fishermen are in protecting their industry.

I am not au fait with the ins and outs of the periwinkle markets. However, we have been involved with Sea Source. In the fishing industry, whether it is pelagic fishing or scallops and crabs, you make a commitment to fulfil all markets, especially if you are going to Europe. That is one of the big concerns: if these markets are lost, they will not be picked up again after the ban or the closed season. The guys who buy the periwinkles will source them elsewhere, and there is a wee bit of loyalty. Once you start sourcing a species from somewhere, that relationship will continue. It is all about relationships, and, once the relationship is broken, it can be difficult to pick it up again.

One Committee member asked whether more processors equated to more gatherers. That is definitely not the case. As Paul said, competition is good and increases the price and variability of where you can go, but it does not necessarily equate to an increase in gatherers.

Someone mentioned spawning. I would not dream of saying that I was an expert in the biology of periwinkles, but, from my experience, I can say that spawning varies around the coast and at different times of year. For example, some boats are catching shrimp at the minute. On the west coast of Ireland, the spawning cycle for shrimp is late autumn, whereas, on the Northern Ireland side, it has come to be more April and May. That shows that there is variability in spawning. If the evidence is not there, maybe the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute needs to do a bit more work on that.

It is difficult that the decision has been made now, when periwinkle fishing is engaged in an FMP. There is a lot of work going into that, and I do not see the logic of having this knee-jerk reaction in the midst of the FMP.

I am happy to take a few questions, but really I represent only a few fishermen who subsidise their income with periwinkle fishing during periods of bad weather, as we are having at the moment.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I appreciate that, Brian. Another thought has occurred to me. I asked our previous witness whether periwinkles all spawned at the same time in that window between January and the end of April: evidently, they do not. If sea temperatures are rising — I do not think that anybody will argue about that being the case — that will change again. It will continue to change, and, eventually, the fixed periods will mean nothing. The regulation could, therefore, be picked up in a more tangible and manageable way that makes more sense. We will have the Department and, I think, an official from AFBI with us shortly.

I have no questions for you, Brian. Do members have questions for Brian?

Mr Wilson: Do you get a sense, Brian, from the gatherers whom you are in contact with, that there is any tangible or noticeable crisis in periwinkles?

Mr Chambers: No, I do not get that feeling at all. With the conditions on the coast here and the tides and all that, Mother Nature has a habit of looking after herself. I do not get that feeling from the guys who have started coming in through the door recently, since hearing about the potential ban.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Do members have any other questions? No.

Brian, you are more than welcome to listen in. You might be interested in the next session.

Mr Chambers: Thanks very much. I am happy to help.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Not a problem. Thank you for joining us so early on a Monday morning.