Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I welcome the following representatives to the meeting: Daniel McNally is the general manager; Jerry McNally is the chairperson; and Dee McElroy is a director. You are welcome this morning, and I ask you to brief the Committee. Thank you.

Mr Daniel McNally (Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-operative Society Ltd): I am still trying to get up to speed with everything and have been sort of thrown in at the deep end. I have been going through the Bill, spotting bits and pieces and can now speak on behalf of the cooperative. I have been a fisherman for the past 23 years, so I have a good understanding of fishing on the lough. In those years and even since I was a child, the lough has changed drastically. As the lough has changed, so has the co-op; it has amended its rules and introduced new rules to protect the stock. At the end of the day, that is in the best interests of the future of the business and fishermen.

Having read the Bill, I understand that regulations have to be put in place to protect the lough, its heritage and the fishermen. When we make new regulations in our co-op, we get the views of the fishermen at first hand. My concern is this: as eel and shellfish owners, will we get the same recognition when the Department makes its new regulations? We cannot help but think that fishermen are being heavily regulated for something that is totally out of our control. We are being punished while pollution flows into our lough.

We are frustrated that most of the data collected has been taken from our fish intake without regard for the main issue: why is our fish intake down? You can make all the regulations you want, but, at the end of the day, our stock levels will not rise unless something more is done about the pollution. That is more or less our view. I do not have enough time to go into more detail.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Will you take us through the changes that you have seen in your 20 years as a fisherman?

Mr D McNally: There have been big changes in fish habitats and so on. Certain areas of the lough where we used to fish are now near enough dead zones. We have had to move to different areas. We have changed our regulations to alter mesh sizes to try to keep younger fish coming on. We have tried and tested that over the years, but things have gone completely downhill over the past five years. It makes no difference what we do or what we try: we are on a downhill slope, and it has been a complete struggle. I would like us to be involved as much as we can in the making of the regulations. Our experience will be vital.

The eel fishery has been closed for three years. We do not totally agree with why it was closed. We are told that eel stocks are down all over Europe, but our argument is that there are still plenty of eels in Lough Neagh. It is just that they are not getting the food that would allow them to reach maturity and run out as silver eels, and that is where the data has been collected. A large part of the lough has been overlooked in that respect.

We have already tightened our regulations for our fishermen, and we are pretty strict. The guys who are with me would say that as well. We have our patrol boat and a bailiff and so on, and we are quite strict. Will the proposed regulations put more pressure on fishermen while other stuff is going on that is out of our control?

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That being the case, are there any amendments that you would like to see to better address the pollution affecting Lough Neagh?

Mr D McNally: I would like to see fines going up. That is being addressed, some way or another, but not enough has been done about the pollution going into Lough Neagh. There are not enough resources on the ground to take into consideration what is going on — it is in the public eye — around Lough Neagh. It affects not only Lough Neagh but its catchment area. I do not know whether any Committee members have seen the catchment area around Lough Neagh, but it is vast, and a number of rivers flow into it. Our back is to the wall as it is, and we know that more regulations will be put on us. As I said, the brown eel fishery has been closed for three years, which has had a big financial impact on not only the cooperative but the Lough Neagh fishermen and their families.

What other regulations will be put on fishermen if we do not clamp down on the main problem? There are farmers, infrastructure, septic tanks: all of that has to come into consideration. In my eyes, however, we are not moving fast enough.

We have been talking about this since 2023 when the algae first showed its head. We have seen no change whatsoever in the years since then. It is not moving quickly enough.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Do you think —?

Mr Dee McElroy (Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-operative Society Ltd): The Bill has a lot of policy objectives, all of which are honourable. I will read them out:

Those objectives are all totally irrelevant when it comes to the pollution that we see in Lough Neagh. They mean nothing; they are only on paper. Pollution wipes all those objectives out, and that pollution is getting worse year-on-year. Nobody even wants to talk about the fact that the main problem is NI Water and slurry. NI Water and slurry are the two biggest factors that contribute to the problem.

There is a big farming industry in Northern Ireland, and it has a strong lobby. No matter what we propose, it objects because it upsets its way of operation. The slurry system has been in place here for 50 years and has been slowly poisoning Lough Neagh. We need you guys, as politicians, to take a moral stand, because it has gone past being an environmental issue; it is a moral issue. It concerns the water that we all drink. The fish life has totally gone from Lough Neagh. It affects bird life and the tourist industry, never mind the fishing industry. It will come back to bite the farming industry as well. If you think that Europeans will buy our products when they think that land is being farmed and polluted at the same time, you are living in another world. That does not happen.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): On that, are the proposed penalties for pollution strong enough? Do you think that the processes for implementing —?

Mr McElroy: Of course they are not strong enough. If a farmer is fined a few thousand pounds, it is sometimes worth his while for the benefit of getting rid of the slurry.

We have to clean up the environment. It does not matter what happens. We have to clean it up. If we go back into the EU, we will be made to clean it up, and there are strong signs that we will be made to go back into the EU. That may not be far away, and we will be punished.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Greater regulatory powers.

Mr McElroy: We will be punished as a result.

Mr Blair: I thank the three of you for that information. Thank you, in particular, for your frankness on the issue. I have stood on the shores of Lough Neagh, in Toome and in other places, such as Rea's Wood, where people used to be able to swim sometimes.

Mr McElroy: That is right.

Mr Blair: This started before the 2023 outbreak that caught all the headlines. At that time, I was trying to help constituents whose dogs had died after they had taken them for a walk at Rea's Wood in Antrim. That is the real world. I am on record in the Committee, in the previous mandate and this one, saying that there is no Red Tractor accreditation or any other farming accreditation in the world that will compensate an industry that has completely trashed the environment and turned the rivers green, destroying nature for the benefit of the economy. There will be no farming without nature; it is as simple as that. Whatever nuance or balance anybody wants to put on it, we know where we are, and we know the reasons why we are there. The science shows that. Given that that is the case, do you think that more needs to be done, or do you know enough about how the pollution, in the form of the sediment lying at the bottom of the lough, affects stocks for your tradition and your industry?

Mr Jerry McNally (Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-operative Society Ltd): I have been a fisherman all my life. The pollution is the big problem. Over the past five or six years, at Toome, I have seen billions and billions of young fish of about the size that I am indicating, but they never progress through the chain to the point at which we are able to catch them. I would like somebody to do a test when they die or to determine what happens that means that they do not progress through that chain. If those fish were able to live and follow through their full life, our cooperative would be booming again, but that is not happening. What is killing them off? What is the reason that they get to only an inch or two in size and no longer continue through the chain?

Mr Blair: What I am really asking — I do not expect you to have scientific data for me today, but I want to know what your grasp is on this — is whether you know enough already. Has enough been done on how the damage that is already there has affected the stock of eels and fish? Have you any data that —?

Mr McElroy: With respect, we are not scientists — we are fishermen — but we know the place as well as scientists know it, and we know that something is wrong at the bottom of the food chain. All the small and micro-invertebrates have disappeared as a result of the pollution, as have a lot of insects and flies, and those are the base of the food chain in Lough Neagh. That applies to birds too, by the way.

Mr J McNally: Ram's Island, where Daniel and I fish, was a colony for cormorants: they are no longer there. What does nature tell us? You look at nature first.

Mr McElroy: Antrim was full of Arctic tern: they have totally disappeared. There is no food for them. They used to dive for small fish, and we used them as a sort of target. If we saw them diving, we knew where the small fish were. That whole natural cycle has disappeared from Lough Neagh.

Mr D McNally: Are you asking whether enough has been done scientifically to provide that data?

Mr Blair: To give you the information that you need to plan for your industry.

Mr D McNally: No. We do not believe that there is enough information. Not enough scientific study is going into the food chain from the bottom up, as my da was saying. That has not been explored enough to let us or those further up the chain know what is happening. As Dee said, we speak only as fishermen with no [Inaudible.]

Mr J McNally: We know that there is something, but we just cannot put our finger on what it is.

Mr Blair: You do not have a dataset or a reference point that you can look at. Am I right in saying that there is nothing that you can reference?

Mr D McNally: The only thing that we are referencing is the biggest bloom from 2023 onwards. Figures from our cooperative show that is has been downhill since then. It is no coincidence that, since that happened in 2023, we are where we are today, and it has shown no signs of coming back up. Bigger fish are coming through that may be a bit hardier and able to survive, but the smaller fish are not coming through.

Mr Blair: That is helpful. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Looking at the regulations, clause 6 refers to:

What value would the regulatory powers of the Bill bring to the marketing, labelling and traceability?

Mr D McNally: I was asking what changes there will be, because we put a lot of effort into marketing and traceability. We can trace every fish from the fisherman to the end product. What we are already doing is maybe ahead of that. What measures are to be introduced regarding the marketing of fishery products?

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Clause 6 refers to:

Is that what you mean?

Mr D McNally: We do not fish for salmon. I am thinking about the marketing of products: will there be any changes to that as well? We are on that already, and, because all that is already taking place, we can set the benchmark for that. We have gone as far as we can with rules and regulations, and putting anything else in place would put the fisherman to the wall completely.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you very much for your briefing. It was useful.

Dee, I think that you made the point that, if we were in the EU — hopefully, we will be back in shortly — enforcement would be greater, and I appreciate that comment. I suppose that that raises the question about the cost of partition. It is not only that, though: there is the cost of us being taken out of the EU, the disaster that was Brexit and the funding that would have come as a result of staying in the EU. The enforcement issue here is a result of years of austerity from the British Government. You said that greater enforcement would help you and that, if those changes were put into the Bill, they would help and have an immediate effect. Are there any amendments that could be made to the Bill that would help your case?

Mr McElroy: A number of years ago, politicians introduced Going for Growth, but nobody added, "Going for Waste". With growth comes waste. Nobody was prepared to regulate the waste. They wanted to keep doing the same with waste as they had been doing but on a bigger scale. Therein lies the problem.

Another problem that I see lies with the Committee, in the sense that the Department of the Environment is also the Department of Agriculture. That makes no sense to me. We need an independent environment agency in this part of the world, now more than ever. That is part of the problem. The agriculture element of the Department is stronger than the environment element. Agriculture overrules the environment. When a DAERA official carries out an environmental study, we do not believe it. We do not believe the results, because it is for DAERA's benefit only; it is not for society's benefit.

I will give you an example. A study was done on sand dredging on the west shore of Lough Neagh. DAERA carried out the study in a time of flood when, naturally, sand comes down the Ballinderry river. That happens every year. It has been doing that for thousands of years. Officials talked about the pollution of the sand: that is a natural phenomenon. The thought that somebody got a few hundred pounds for doing that study makes no sense to us fishermen.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Is there a disconnect there and a need for people on the ground who better understand the environment and fishing?

Mr McElroy: Yes, there is a need for environmental people who are totally independent of government.

Ms Finnegan: That is useful. We have argued many times here about the need for an independent environmental protection agency, because you would have somebody there. We know that what we have in place is not working. We have said that many times and argued that back and forth. I appreciate your comment that that is the case, because we have debated that for a long time. That is useful.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you very much for coming in and giving your evidence. Everything has been noted, and we will take that evidence and scrutinise it as we move through the process. Thank you for being here this morning.

Mr McElroy: Thank you for having us.