Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Good morning. I welcome David Kennedy, chairperson of the Lough Neagh Rivers Trust; Allen Fleming, member of the Lough Neagh Rivers Trust and chair of the Crumlin and District Angling Association; and Roy Fullerton, Lough Neagh Rivers Trust member and secretary of Kells, Connor and Glenwherry Angling Club. You are all very welcome. You may make your presentation.

Mr David Kennedy (Lough Neagh Rivers Trust): Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence on the Fisheries, Aquaculture and Water Environment Bill. I am speaking on behalf of the Lough Neagh Rivers Trust, along with Roy Fullerton and Allen Fleming. The trust was established in 2024, bringing together connected interests across the Lough Neagh catchment with the aim of protecting and enhancing the Lough Neagh system and developing a long-term, measurable and data-driven approach to the sustainability of our native species and waterways. Our representation extends across the Ballinderry, Moyola, Maine, Kells, Six Mile Water, Crumlin and Glenavy river systems. The River Blackwater Catchment Trust and the Ballinderry Rivers Trust are also represented. Our message to the Committee is straightforward: if you fix the rivers, you fix the lough.

The Bill is an opportunity to provide Northern Ireland with modern, robust and future-proofed fisheries and water legislation. The Bill, in its current form, does not go far enough. It remains too heavily rooted in the Fisheries Act 1966, and it does not adequately reflect the environmental, societal or economic challenges facing our waterways in 2026. The Bills needs to provide a much more robust update in order to move on from the past mistakes and inadequacies of regulatory processes. We know as a fact that current regulation regimes and policies are outdated and would not stand the test within enforcement and justice systems. We do not need legislation that effectively delivers more of the same. There are problems with definition, enforcement powers, penalties and relationships between existing pieces of legislation. Most importantly, there is a risk that weaknesses currently dealt with through policy and guidance will simply continue because they have not been properly addressed in primary legislation. That matters, because policy can change. Legislation provides the legal foundation for enforcement of regulation. We have seen examples of policy changing, and not for the better, overnight, when it has been challenged. We have also seen situations where enforcement has been difficult because underlying legislation has lacked clarity. Furthermore, we have seen situations where enforcement has been difficult because departmental officials have failed to implement the 1966 Act. All of that can be evidenced.

The experience of the Crumlin and District Angling Association is particularly relevant. An issue around so-called deemed extraction licences was supposed to be resolved within six months. Some 18 years after the deemed licence was granted — it was granted to Glenowen Fisheries, which was previously represented there — the policy was still not finalised, and intervention was needed through the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP). It was brought to the attention of the Office for Environmental Protection by the Crumlin and District Angling Association and Fish Legal. The OEP concluded that there was an indication that DAERA may not have complied with environmental law and that that failure was potentially serious. That is why we believe that lessons from the past must be built into the proposed legislation that is before the Committee.

The Bill needs to include considerably stronger penalties. A £50,000 cap for water pollution is simply not a sufficient deterrent. England, Wales and Scotland have moved towards much stronger financial penalties, including unlimited penalties for the most serious criminal offences. The proposed cap of £50,000 amounts to only 10% of the civil cap available in England and Wales and only 0·03% of the largest criminal court decision — a £135 million penalty — which was handed down for thousands of illegal sewage discharges that polluted protected coastal waters in Kent, Hampshire and Sussex. Indeed, even if we take the maximum penalty of £20,000 from the 1966 Act, which was brave at the time, as a benchmark and apply inflationary measures to that figure, today's figure would allow for a maximum penalty of over £330,000. To apply a £50,000 cap is a retrograde step. We need to scrap the cap and align with UK legislation, as the Bill was intended to do. If we are serious about protecting our waterways, we should not legislate for a weaker regime. The cap should be removed, and each serious pollution offence should be dealt with on its own merits. That is not a catch-all strategy, but it would give us the tools to deal with repeat offenders and major pollution incidents.

Enforcement is not simply about fines. The Bill should provide for cost recovery for investigations; penalties that reflect the seriousness of the offence; and the recovery of costs for restoring damaged habitats. Last week's headlines were about Budget negotiations and additional moneys being needed. We know that Departments are cash-strapped and that investigative teams and smaller branches within DAERA are cash-strapped, yet we see, for instance, investigative teams going out, maybe nine at a time, and spending time to see if the case is ready for court and stuff like that, with no prosecutions following. There is no cost recovery. The Department is haemorrhaging money through investigations that lack sufficient finality.

There should be stronger powers to deal with repeat offenders, including the ability to suspend or revoke environmental operating licences, where appropriate. We need something between informal advice and prosecution; we need the middle road. We need to support the introduction of corrective action and improvement notices, as set out by the likes of the Health and Safety Executive. We require problems to be addressed within a defined period. That is absent from the Bill. The annual dewatering of the Crumlin river illustrates why that is necessary. The Department has been aware of that issue for almost a decade, yet it remains unresolved. Environmental damage does not wait for administrative processes to conclude.

The Bill must properly address aquaculture. We are concerned that the existing fish culture licences could simply be transferred into the new licensing system without a proper review of their environmental conditions. If an existing licence is inadequate, we should not transfer that inadequacy into the new system. The transition should be an opportunity to strengthen regulation, not preserve weakness. Aquaculture licences should not be granted where they are likely to have a significant adverse impact on sensitive species or their habitats or where abstraction would result in significantly reduced water flows. As someone from DAERA said to us the other day, every single salmon counts now. We have had only 1,800 salmon through the Bann counter this year. If you imagine those hitting all the rivers in Lough Neagh, you realise that the amount is miniscule compared with the 600,000 that were there 100 years ago.

There are significant omissions from the Bill. One of the most glaring omissions is hydroelectricity and hydro generators. There are currently 116 licensed hydroelectric schemes across the North, yet the proposed legislation does not adequately recognise or regulate their potential impact on river ecology. Once again, we have very clear evidence of the negative impacts that underregulated hydroelectric schemes can have on our rivers and waterways. There are also concerns about those operating outside their licence when it comes to public moneys and renewables obligation certificate (ROC) payments. Can hydro schemes claim ROC payments if they are not meeting the conditions of their licence? That question needs to be asked, not just by this Committee but by the likes of the Department for the Economy. As energy pressures increase, more applications for hydro schemes are likely. We need legislation that anticipates those pressures rather than responding to them years later.

The same applies to river barriers. Barrier removal has been identified as an important element of river basin management since 2009, yet, 17 years later, we remain largely at a mapping stage, with no barriers removed. River barriers affect fish migration, sediment and nutrient movement and the ability of rivers to respond to flooding and drought. The Bill should provide clear powers to intervene where obsolete barriers and dams are damaging river connectivity and ecological health.

The Bill needs to have sound scientific evidence at its heart. Our proposed amendments would require annual monitoring; scientifically-based management of exploited fish stocks; proper recording of catches; and application of an ecosystem-based and precautionary approach. Where there is insufficient scientific information, that should not become a reason for delay. Our rivers and fisheries cannot be managed effectively without good data. The legislation should, therefore, require decisions to be based on the best available scientific evidence. It should also clearly explain how the Fisheries Act, the Water Order, the water framework directive, the habitats regulations, the Climate Change Act and other relevant obligations work together, because it fails to do so. At present, there is too much uncertainty about how those different legislative routes interact.

We have an opportunity. We can introduce legislation that is genuinely fit for the next generation and that protects rivers, supports sustainable fisheries, provides certainty for responsible operators and gives regulators the powers that they need to act. Alternatively, we can continue to rely on legislation that is now 60 years old, supplemented by policies and guidance that have demonstrably failed to provide sufficient protection or enforcement mechanisms. The Lough Neagh Rivers Trust believes that the choice should be clear. We need stronger primary legislation; effective enforcement; meaningful penalties; proper protection for sensitive species and habitats; and, above all, decisions that are based on sound scientific evidence. Our waterways are not simply fisheries, and we are not here as a collective of anglers. Our waterways are ecosystem habitats and communities and resources that must be protected for future generations. Therefore, we urge the Committee to strengthen the Bill substantially and to use this opportunity to create the modern, robust and enforceable framework that Northern Ireland's rivers and lakes urgently require.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you for your recommendations seeking stronger primary legislation and stronger enforcement. The Bill proposes expanded enforcement measures and fixed penalty notices. Are those proposed powers necessary or adequate?

Mr Kennedy: We understand the need for a more flexible approach but also for those in the Department who will seek to enforce any elements of the new legislation to have a greater toolkit. We understand that fixed penalties are a new and innovative way to do things. However, the capping of the ultimate penalty, which we mentioned in the presentation, is clearly inadequate. In the case of the wipeout that happened on the River Blackwater in Cork in 2025, the cost of habitat recovery and of returning the river to its original state amounted to £70,000. Therefore, automatically, we are £20,000 down, even without determining whether a court will decide to impose a maximum penalty. We need DAERA and the Department of Justice to work together to train judges in ecological and environmental crimes and their impacts, so that they are properly addressed.

It comes back to resources. The Department needs to be able recoup the costs that it has put into investigation across the board. There were 3,500 dead fish in the Crumlin river in 2023, but no prosecution was forthcoming. Over a number of days, we had nine individuals out along that river. The cost of that recovery included the cost of gathering the scientific data that was needed, the collections and the fish counting: all of that goes on. You also have to consider the future impact on the habitats on a river that is already under pressure due to the over-extraction of water. That all adds up, and we need it to be addressed. No prosecution was forthcoming in that case.

It is the fish kills that get the headlines. There are pollution incidents across the board that do not get the same headlines. The regime that is in place needs to be revised. There are low, medium and high degrees of severity. You could put three skips of pollutant material into a river at high flow, and, because it is diluted and does not kill fish, it may be regarded as a medium or low severity case. Were that amount of material to be put into a river at low flow, killing fish, with the same amount of pollution going into the likes of Lough Neagh, it would be regarded as being of high severity. We need enforcement mechanisms to be strengthened. We need innovation. We need to learn from the likes of the Environment Agency (EA) in England, where, in an innovative approach, not just criminal cases but civil cases are being taken. The EA can decide, for example, that a polluter must donate moneys to a local charity for habitat restoration. The local charities are, largely, river trusts, so that money goes straight back to be spent on the river. It is an easier and more cost-effective and timely way to do things, instead of waiting for three years to go to court.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Have you had any engagement with DAERA and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency to try to put that point of view across?

Mr Kennedy: Regularly. We, as a rivers trust, and all our constituent members have met DAERA about providing a resource. We are not there to lock horns but to improve things. Yes, where there are difficulties, we will challenge DAERA, but we will try to find a positive solution. That is what engagement takes. We sit down regularly with senior fisheries officers, and we correspond regularly with the Department. As we said earlier, it is not just an email from anglers. We know whom to contact, and we contact them regularly. We will email them and seek answers.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Are you satisfied that you are getting answers? Do you find that you are getting time-bound answers and an indication that what you are saying has been considered?

Mr Kennedy: Yes and no, unfortunately. There are some in the Department who will give us a timely response. There are others who will obfuscate and deflect. Glen Oak Fisheries, whose representative was here earlier, was found guilty of not having sufficient grilles, as set out under the 1966 Act, on its Kilrea site, so the salmon coming down the Bann all went into the fish farm. There are meant to be grilles from the bed of the river up to the high-water mark. We raised the issue that those grilles were not available on the alternative site in Crumlin, but it has taken us two years to get to the stage of an investigation. There have been countless excuses coming from very senior officials, who have said, "We can't tell whether it's because of climate change. It's hard to gather evidence". We bought a GoPro, got a big stick and put it under the water in order to gather the evidence. It is only because we pushed on that that, after two years, there is now an investigation of whether there was a potential breach of the Fisheries Act.

The Kells, Connor and Glenwherry Angling Club, for instance, is seeking to put in place a five- to seven-year environmental impact scheme for the Kells water, given the significant reduction of dollaghan brown trout in the Kells system, and take a scientific monitoring approach to DNA, placement and the spawn of fish and the like in order to try to advance things. It is working closely in partnership with the likes of Queen's University, DAERA's inland fisheries branch and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) to try to ascertain why that is happening. If it happens for natural reasons, so be it. If it happens because of a, b and c, so be it. Without that five- to seven-year investigation, however, it will be very hard to ascertain the reasons. There has still been no response from the Department. It is another delayed response. I will bring in Roy on that one.

Mr Roy Fullerton (Lough Neagh Rivers Trust): The background is that the Kells water and the Glenwherry river are one river, which is just known as the Glenwherry river. Its upstream section is the Kells water, and it has more mature sections that flow into the River Maine. It was a significant dollaghan river for a long time. In the 1970s and 1980s, it suffered a lot from pollution, both agricultural and industrial, and dollaghan stocks in the 1980s were badly depleted. The club was stocked initially with dollaghan fry obtained from the Ballinderry system, and we then developed our own hatchery over more than two decades. We successfully applied for section 14 permits from the Department to remove broodstock fish for the hatchery and to introduce unfed fry to headwaters and burns where spawning was depleted. That appeared to us to work, restoring dollaghan runs to very healthy levels.

From 2020 onwards, DAERA has declined to issue section 14 permits. We understand that the rationale behind that, based on current fisheries science, is that the introduction of hatchery fish is of no benefit and is potentially detrimental. We understand that that can be applied to salmon stocks, for example, for which it is dangerous to introduce different genetic strains and whatnot, but our system simply involved using fish that were already returning to their native waters. They were being brought on-site within a stone's throw of the river, and we were showing good results. We recognise that there are many other factors involved, which is why we strongly support the amendments that the Lough Neagh Rivers Trust has proposed about annual monitoring and scientifically based management of exploited fish stocks.

We had a meeting with DAERA officials, who suggested that we should listen to Professor Prodohl from Queen's University. He came along and explained the capacity that has been developed in recent years for DNA sampling and how that can identify genetic strains specific to rivers etc. He also said that habitat improvement was the main weapon that should be used. Although we are committed to habitat improvement and are doing a significant amount of work on that with the assistance of grant funding from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, as well as through our own sweat equity and whatnot, the benefit of supplementary stocking should be investigated scientifically. We therefore developed a proposal for a five- to seven-year study using input from citizen volunteers and our hatchery to identify where habitat only could be sampled in certain burns, with supplementary stocking in others, and where DNA structure and historical results could be built up. That would take a minimum of five to seven years. We submitted that proposal back in May, with an invitation for co-design, but we got no response, so we then submitted our own best effort at designing the study. Again, we have had no response. Yes, there is a need for scientifically based management of wild trout stocks.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Do you feel that you have not been sufficiently able to offer your views and experience in a co-design process?

Mr Fullerton: Yes. We are committed to the big picture. We are committed to habitat improvement. We successfully ran the hatchery with DAERA's cooperation and support for over 20 years. That does not appear to sit with the current science, but the science has not been sufficiently looked at. There has not been a study of sufficient depth done on that. We are proposing to offer the use of our facilities and our volunteer labour.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. We are listening. We are taking the evidence, and what you are saying is important.

Mr Kennedy: It is interesting that, under North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO) guidelines, to which we are a signatory, there is a blanket ban locally on hatcheries, whereas England, Scotland, Wales and, indeed, other countries have seen benefits. The majority of other NASCO signatories also use hatcheries as a method of restoring salmon stocks. Again, I point to the figure of only 1,800 salmon, at the most recent count, coming through the Bann counter. The blanket ban is decimating stocks. Every single salmon counts. There is the potential that kids in the next generation will never see a salmon.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That is fairly alarming.

Mr Allen Fleming (Lough Neagh Rivers Trust): The other thing to mention is fish kills. When we have a fish kill, because we cannot restock, the stream or river has to recover by itself. We are not allowed to restock. Unlike a farmer, who can restock if something happens to his cattle, we cannot restock, because of the genetic issue. The river may then take five to 10 years to recover.

Mr Kennedy: It may take five to 10 years for it to recover if nothing else happens in that river. The Crumlin river, after losing 3,500 fish from a section, had a significant silt spill from one of the local quarries into the river —.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Is that in that case, David, or are you saying that, with every incident of pollution in every river, it takes five to 10 years for the river to cleanse itself?

Mr Kennedy: That is after fish kills and the damage that they cause to the habitat. It can take five years for the fish to move back into that section, and that has an impact on protected species such as kingfishers and otters, and, indeed, on salmon and eels in certain sections. We know that the eel population is very much under threat as well. That figure is for the habitat to return naturally. In the Bill, there is an emphasis on habitat improvement, which we firmly support.

We could improve habitat to the nth degree, but it could still be wiped out overnight.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I have one final question. You have noted the uncertainty about the relationship between the Fisheries Act (Northern Ireland) 1966 and the Water (Northern Ireland) Order 1999. How would the Bill address that?

Mr Kennedy: There was a recent case in which there was a larger fine for a polluter. I think that it was over £100,000. I need to check that, but I will come back to the Committee with the details. It was a successful prosecution under the Water Order. No pathway was laid out for what takes precedence between water quality, enforcement and pollution in the 1966 Act. The Bill itself uses archaic language, such as "deleterious matter". Surely, in 2026, we can ascertain what that matter is and provide a more legally robust system to manage our water systems. That catch-all term may well have been good in 1966, but, 60 years later, it is not. Sorry. What was your question again?

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): It was on the relationship between the Fisheries Act and the Water Order.

Mr Kennedy: No pathway has been set out between the Fisheries Act and enforcement mechanisms. Which takes precedence? Will things fall between two stools as the Department or any of the other regulatory authorities decides on the best course of action? We need to see much more integration of not just the Water Order but the likes of the water framework directive, responsibilities under the river basin management plans, and climate change and habitat improvement regulations. They all need to come together in the Bill, and pathways need to be outlined. Water pollution may well have an impact on habitat regulations. It may well impact in other instances. Lough Neagh is an area of special scientific interest (ASSI). Crumlin and District Angling Association and the Belfast Hills Partnership recently received almost half a million pounds from the Department through a funding project to try to create a green corridor the length of the Crumlin river. A question that they were asked was whether they affected an ASSI. The simple answer to that was, "Yes, we do, because we feed into it", yet other industry along that river, of whatever type — be it a quarry, be it a landfill, be it agricultural or be it industrial — is not necessarily held to the same rigorous standards when it comes to water quality protections.

Mr McAleer: Thanks very much for your presentation and for your written information. You said that a £50,000 cap for water pollution is not a high enough penalty. What is the penalty regime across the water and in the EU, including in the South?

Mr Kennedy: They are all different. I think that England has taken the most progressive approach. England, Scotland and Wales have removed the maximum cap for the most serious criminal pollution incidents. There are different benchmarks in civil and criminal cases. In criminal cases, a higher threshold has to be reached in the court system. The maximum penalty that has been imposed by a judge is £135 million. The water company responsible pleaded guilty earlier, so that fine was reduced to £90 million.

A fine of £20,000 or £50,000 does not scratch the surface. Major industries around our waterways have insurance policies to cover such things. Pilgrim's, which owns Moy Park, employs thousands of people and will have an international way of dealing with a £50,000 fine. That is pocket money to it. The cap does not address what needs to go back into the system. Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) breaks down its fines in the South into what I mentioned: cost recovery for the investigation; a penalty for causing the pollution; and habitat improvement moneys. Although those fines may not amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds, it would certainly be a more constructive approach to take if the Department were to recoup some of the investment that it has put into trying to protect, enhance and investigate on our waterways. Habitat recovery is the primary focus of river recovery and enhancement that is pushed by DAERA. No money is available for that through the penalty system. Indeed, that currently goes into the criminal justice system. Penalties need to be ring-fenced. Penalties for water pollution, which cause damage to habitats and our waterways, need to be ring-fenced so that those moneys can be utilised to redress the damage that has occurred as a result of pollution incidents.

Mr Blair: Thanks to all of you. Apologies for my having to be absent for some of the session. I have some knowledge of the work that you do on rivers in my constituency of South Antrim, and I am very grateful for it. What you have presented today could be framed in a slightly different way. It shows us the damage that has been carried to Lough Neagh, whether we like it or not, from its catchment rivers before it reaches its end destination and causes the problem. Everybody then seeks solutions that might be found, if you do not mind my saying, further upstream. I will ask this to get it on the record: plainly, do you agree that there should be no upper limit to the penalties?

Mr Kennedy: No. Each and every case needs to be decided on its own merits, but as soon as we apply a cap, we hinder ourselves from dealing with the most severe pollution. That is not to say that every pollution incident will result in the maximum penalty. That would be a crazy way of thinking about things. We do need to increase and enhance the toolkit, however, be that through civil fines or criminal fines in the courts, in order to achieve better water quality.

Each report that comes out states that our waters and rivers do not reach "good" status, despite targets being set. We are not going to reach the targets set for 2027, so we need that toolkit, and we need to be more innovative with that toolkit. It cannot come down just to fines. We need to work with landowners and those who utilise our water sources to seek better ways in which to achieve better water quality. That toolkit should be provided through some of the forthcoming legislation.

Mr Blair: You draw a comparison with GB and mentioned pollution by water companies. I could be accused of asking a leading question here, and if I am, I plead guilty, but do you believe that no exceptions should be made for a private water company here under a regime called the statement of regulatory principles and intent (SORPI)?

Mr Kennedy: Our view is very clear that the SORPI needs to be lifted. Pollution is pollution is pollution. We look at it in a number of ways. We have a SORPI. We have cross-compliance penalties in the agriculture system, which we are against for two reasons. First, it is a double dunt for the industry. It is the only industry that gets a double dunt for tackling pollution incidents through fines. Again, I go back to the fact that pollution is pollution is pollution, whether it be from a quarry, by an individual or by a farmer. We need legislation that defines "pollution" and tackles it. Secondly, cross-compliance can absolutely dilute the ability to bring a civil case, because it is a civil case in itself, and it is a penalty that has been drawn down. The 15% cap was put in place by former Minister Poots. That 15% cap has never been reached. It is therefore a misnomer and a misdirection in itself.

We need to rid the agriculture community of cross-compliance. The vast majority of farmers operate good practices. There are those who, unfortunately, do not, and we see the impact of that on our rivers. Again, it comes back to the toolkit. We need a toolkit to deal with that effectively. Cross-compliance would hamper the likes of what the NIEA is doing with civil cases and by working with all those affected to bring about a much more productive outcome.

Mr Blair: I therefore assume that you agree that it would be useful to have an environmental protection agency that is independent of government.

Mr Kennedy: Absolutely. We strongly believe in having an environmental protection agency. We are one of the few organisations arguing for going to the next level, which is to have an environmental ombudsman, even if having one were to be time-bound. The reason for that is that my understanding of employment law in the Civil Service is that if we were to establish an independent agency, the staff would move across. If past discrepancies were to be investigated, we would have an independent organisation investigating those discrepancies from within the same staff cohort.

We therefore need something to be able to address why Lough Neagh is green, why other rivers are dead and what the impact is of the likes of —. What is the big dump up in Derry?

Mr Blair: Mobuoy.

Mr Kennedy: We would have an independent investigation being done by people in the organisation who would hamper that investigation.

Mr Blair: I have a brief final question, which is separate to the others. I declare an interest, because the matter and I have some history from my previous employment, and David, Allen and others will be aware of that. Do you agree that the promotion of angling, and therefore the promotion of what you do, should be considered crucial by the Government in order to raise public awareness and increase the very valuable voluntary capacity that is out there?

Mr Kennedy: Most certainly, although we do not just need to look at the promotion of angling. Angling is incredibly important and an economic driver. It brings in millions of euros in the South, and, although we have not put a recent figure on it, the impact of angling in the North is significant. People travel here for our clean, good waterways, good fisheries and the hospitality that exists here. Tourism NI is not at the races on angling and the economic impact that it can have. If, however, it had the resources and the marketing to bring Americans here and to the west coast of Ireland, the impact would be phenomenal. Americans travel, and they do come here.

Angling is an economic driver, and we need to realise that. In fact, the latest figure, from 2016, for angling's economic contribution was £30 million, compared with £12 million, for example, for the aquaculture industry, which receives Government support. The aquaculture industry received Government support during COVID, and it received grants after that to enhance and boost itself. Our waterways are not just used for angling. Water sports also use our waterways. They use our waterways for paddleboarding, recreational cold-water swimming and other activities, and such usage has seen exponential rises right across Europe. Our waterways could be used for such activities and bring moneys into the economy. We need to address that.

Mr Blair: Chair, before your time on the Committee, we visited Lough Erne, which you will know well, and discussed the issue with fisheries officers there. It was one of our exploration visits as a Committee. I say this from memory, and it will need to be checked, but the figures on the economic benefit did not capture family members who travelled with anglers. The economic benefit in that particular area is therefore probably greater than what is captured by the current data, which looks only at the economic contribution of the angler and not that of the wider family. That benefit will therefore be more widespread.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): My experience is that international angling competitions have film crews at them. The support people do a recce a couple of weeks before the event. The economic impact and the tourism potential are therefore massive for the industry, but that relies on our having clean rivers and lakes to safeguard our reputation.

Mr Kennedy: Sustainable stocks are also needed.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Yes. Thank you, John. Those were very interesting points.
David, you mentioned that the Bill contains some omissions, including hydroelectric schemes. From your knowledge of inland waterways, are you able to say whether there are others?

Mr Kennedy: We talked about that, and I thought about it literally 10 minutes after I had sent the Committee the documents. Private water bailiffs are not mentioned in the Bill. The Department has the ability to utilise local people's skills and their knowledge of the rivers at little cost, which would enhance its ability to detect pollution, report it and introduce not just pollution offences but other fisheries-related offences. The resource benefit of using local people is that they are on the ground. For example, anecdotally, Alan and I were on-site in Crumlin and had located the source of the pollution that killed 3,500 fish before the NIEA had. We were then told to get off-site because there was a live investigation. We are now sorry that we left, because we could have gathered further information and evidence. We could have local bailiffs, who are enabled with the legal powers to do that. Such bailiffs are sworn in by a court and are therefore duty-bound by the law. The NIEA is under pressure because of resourcing. The people I am talking about have intimate knowledge of every sheugh and pipe and of every inflow and outflow of their rivers, probably more so than a local enforcement officer, who may have to cover five, six or seven rivers, does. We therefore need to utilise the local resource for river management, and that is absent from the Bill.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That is good. Yes.

Mr Kennedy: As you mentioned, the area of hydroelectric schemes, and their potential growth, is huge. For example, we have concerns about at least four hydroelectric schemes, and we are looking at the wider hydroelectric schemes to see whether they meet the licensing requirements. We are also looking at their impact. It is a huge issue. We see water abstraction from the Crumlin river to a fish farm, as well as the hydroelectric scheme causing annual dewatering, where the bed of the river is as dry as your desk for half a kilometre. It is unbelievable, and it has an impact on the overall connectivity and ecology of the river, and, indeed, on its water quality. I do not believe that, at all times, aquaculture puts better water back into the river than that which it took out. It is not borrowed. For example, all the water in the Crumlin river goes into Glen Oak Fisheries from April until September. There has been rain recently, but the river is dry. DAERA is very much aware of that, and we report the issue every year. Every year, we have the evidence, and we have garnered media coverage on the issue. In that case, improvement notices could be used instead of waiting five years, which is too long, to see whether the hydroelectric scheme and the fish passage works. An improvement notice, for example, could be similar to that dictated by the HSE and be time-bound. Six months could be given to make the improvements required in order to protect the river under the pillars that are here and under the environmental and precautionary objectives in the Bill. Those additional tools need to be introduced.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you very much.

Mr T Buchanan: The Lough Neagh Rivers Trust has stated that the Bill as introduced is weak and that it fails to make adequate updates to address clear changes to the approaches taken to deal with the challenges that waterways are facing. Why do you think that is? Does the Department not have the professional expertise to produce something that will deal with the issues?

Mr Kennedy: We carried out engagement leading up to the Bill's introduction, such as consultation with our members, our consultation response and speaking anecdotally and officially with the departmental officials. The Bill was touted as being a new start for fisheries and waterways, as the 1966 Act was deemed inadequate. If you look at the schedule to the Bill, where the fines are updated, the 1966 Act is frequently referenced. The Bill is not a huge leap from the 1966 Act, which we were told needed to be updated significantly in order to provide the regulatory powers that are needed. I do not know why the Department has not made that leap, because the demand, requests, information and evidence are all there.

We need to focus on more issues in the primary legislation. For example, why can we not leave policy to the expertise of scientists and experts in the Department? One policy goes back to the 1966 Act to grant exemption permits and allows an abstractor or an operator to step outside the remit of that Act. The policy and guidance on that from the Department was that, before the exemption permit is granted, the Department must consult the abstractor and the adjoining fishery. By way of an example, an exemption permit was granted for the Crumlin river during 2023. The river is severely impacted on by water abstraction every year through deemed licenses. We can come back to the issue of the lack of an abstraction policy.

The exemption permit was granted, and we challenged it, because we were not consulted. After that challenge, the policy internally was changed overnight from "must consult the abstractor" to "may consult the adjoining fishery". The Department cut the hands off us, because fishery owners may be consulted eventually. All fisheries owners may be consulted. We complained about abstraction to the Office for Environmental Protection because we are not consulted on anything that impacts on granting the exemption permits. The policy can be changed overnight. It is not strong enough. At times, policy and guidance are not legally robust, and we need to see a much enhanced primary legislative process.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Áine?

Ms Murphy: No, Chair. I am good.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Aoife, do you have a question?

Ms Finnegan: No, but thank you very much to the witnesses. The session has been very useful.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you for coming in to give evidence. We have listened to you, which will help us with our deliberations on the Bill.

Mr Kennedy: Thank you very much for having us.