Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I welcome Andrew Frazer, director of Harperstown Power Ltd, and Trevor McBurney, director of HydroNI Ltd. You are very welcome. I invite you to give us your briefing.

Mr Andrew Frazer (Harperstown Power Ltd): Thank you for having us here this morning. As you know, we sent a detailed response to your consultation on the Bill. We tried to see what the issues were as far as we were concerned and to suggest amendments and state exactly how they would solve the issues. This is primary legislation. As we understand it, secondary legislation will follow, and, after that, there will be a fisheries policy. All those things may introduce measures that may affect us. The secondary legislation will be open for consultation, but not necessarily the implementation of the policy.

We had a very interesting conference last week, mostly attended by hydropower generators, but we invited Colin Armstrong from DAERA, who has appeared in front of you before, and Michelle McNally, the new principal fisheries officer. We all got on extremely well and agreed about a lot of things. Colin in particular drew attention to the issues that affect the number of salmon coming up the river: water quality, marine survival, the effects of drainage schemes and, probably, climate change, none of which is at all related to hydro. We are quite pleased that Michelle McNally said that removing all the barriers on all the rivers in Northern Ireland would not make any difference to the number of fish in our rivers. In talking about fish, she was really talking about dollaghan and salmon.

The main point that we discussed was the comment about "national benefit" in the Bill. We said that there needs to be recognition that fisheries policy needs to be rather wider that what is described in the Bill. Hydro needs to be recognised as being an acceptable activity that goes on in Northern Ireland. It is mentioned in article 15 of the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2017. The document that the Department will have to produce and submit to you for scrutiny should be called the "Inland and Water Environment Policy Statement".

One thing that we have talked about a lot is the absence of evidence. I wrote to the Minister, first in 2013 and again last year, asking how many fish had been killed by hydropower schemes or water turbines. None. We asked the then chief fisheries officer Seamus Connor exactly the same question about what evidence he had; he said that he had none. Evidence cuts both ways, and, as a company, we are taking on the task of doing our own ecological surveys on the river. Let us find out what is going on and whether we are having an effect. That will provide useful evidence that we can put to the Department and say, "Look, what we're doing has no effect on the ecology of the river". One of the issues, following on from that, is the idea of the precautionary principle. We have got the opinion from Seamus Connor that the Department is not really interested in looking for evidence, because it can hide behind the precautionary principle. What I am telling you is that there is no evidence that any of our activities carries significant risk.

We have also talked about transparency in way that the Department deals with us and implements measures. It sometimes thinks that it can make up a new measure and impose it on somebody without adhering to the Fisheries Act (Northern Ireland) 1966. We are also concerned that regulation should be proportionate to risk — that is very important — and that the penalties should be proportionate to the environmental damage that is caused. If there was a pollution event and we killed 35,000 fish, that would be a big issue, but if somebody can come and find one fish that has been damaged by a water turbine —. The measures have to be proportionate.

We also want to see accountability for the Department in the Bill. We are being held to account the whole time, and we would like to think that the Department will also be held to account. That means that it should produce reports that show that it has carried out monitoring to see that its measures are achieving what it says that they are going to achieve.

Another big issue for us has been the standard of service. That is to do with licences and permits, where, again, we find that the Department just makes up the rules as it goes along and does not reply to requests for information or emails. In an instance that affects my family, we asked for a permit, and the Department inspected the site. It said that we would have the permit within a month. Four months passed, and we wrote to Department, but it did not reply. We eventually asked a solicitor to contact the Department. He did so, but he is still waiting for a reply. That is 16 months after the first application. That standard of service is not acceptable.

We are also interested in other things. The Department has put forward all its objectives, but we would like you to go to it and say, "How are the measures that you are setting out in the Bill actually going to protect fish better and increase the number of fish? How will they deal with the seals at the mouth of the Bann and with marine survival?". It is very important that we see that the measures will achieve what the Department says that they will.

There have been issues to do with section 48 of the 1966 Act, to which clause 20 relates. That is to do with Sion Mills, and Trevor McBurney will talk to you about that.

One of the things that surprised me at the conference was that a gentleman called David Kennedy stood up. I believe that, about a month ago, he gave evidence to you that there was a huge issue with hydros. I do not quite know how he got into our conference, but he was there, and he said a lot of very sensible things. In the end, he said that we need to have hydropower and to ensure that it is developed safely. Perhaps you would like to go back to him and find out what the huge issues with hydropower are.

I am involved with the main angling club that fishes on our stretch of the river. This year, there has been a small run of salmon, and the salmon are very small, but a big run of dollaghan. Everyone is delighted with the dollaghan. Those fish, some of them large, are being caught every day. What is interesting is that there are so few salmon but a lot of dollaghan. Why is that? The salmon go to sea, but the dollaghan go only to Lough Neagh. Both fish have to come up the river past us, spawn and go back down the river, but the dollaghan go only as far as Lough Neagh while the salmon go to the sea. We know that something like 98% of fish die at sea.
That is really all that I have to say. Trevor is going to talk to you about a number of other things, including his vision for the future.

Mr Trevor McBurney (HydroNI Ltd): Thank you for your time today. I am Trevor McBurney, joint owner of HydroNI Ltd, along with Gerard Murphy, who is not with us today. Over the past 20 years, we, as a company, have been responsible for most of the redevelopment of hydropower in Northern Ireland. We have worked on about 60 projects, most of them being reinstatements of old sites but some of them being new projects. Through that work, we have learned an awful lot.

The Fisheries Act (Northern Ireland) 1966 states:

That is its simple, single, stated purpose. After 60 years in effect, it is appropriate that we ask the question: how is it going? Have we conserved the salmon and inland fisheries of Northern Ireland successfully throughout the 60 years of the Act? Under section 22, the Department is mandated to produce an annual report containing:

I turned to the inland fisheries report of 2025 in naive expectation of finding relevant data. In it, I found an account of the Department's busyness: how many fishing licences and permits were issued; how much money was brought in from them; how much enforcement and prosecution activity was taken on; and how much rearing and stocking activity was carried on from DAERA fish farms into lakes and the public angling estate and released from Bushmills. What I did not find in it was any reference at all to the stocks of salmon in our rivers and inland fisheries, either in the current year or in the context of the 60-year history of the Act. It is hard to believe that a Department with a simple, single, clear mandate produces an annual report, which it is obligated to do under the legislation, that does not in any way address its single stated purpose. For me, that illustrates a Department concerned with proving its busyness as a distraction from reporting at all on its primary purpose, which is to conserve and protect the salmon and inland fisheries of Northern Ireland. There is no statement of or reference to the populations of fish in our rivers in the report. It is not that the Department does not have the figures; various counting devices are in place in many of our rivers. It could provide them, but I can only conclude that it is ashamed and embarrassed to do so. It is time to hold the Department to account. The Department is no longer concerned with the protection of fish. Its only concern is the protection of itself.

In the period of its existence, we have gone from what was widely accepted as a rich fishery in Northern Ireland to one where anglers are routinely subjected to catch-and-release mandates; where the commercial netting of salmon has been banned; where regular pollution events hit the headlines; and where, fundamentally, the stocks of fish in our rivers have been decimated from what they once were. Depending on the measure used — there are many — our populations of fish and the richness of our inland fisheries are a mere fraction of what they once were. That is not a record of success; it is a record of the Department's failure to deliver its single stated purpose. That instrument of law has failed to achieve its purpose, and the institution delivering it has failed, yet we carry on, year after year.

We approach a new Bill from that position. In front of us, we have a Bill that is a derivative form of what has gone before. We see increased enforcement powers and powers to create new regulations but nothing of substance, action or clear, ambitious objective-setting. After 60 years of failure, we need to call time on this. The definition of insanity is to carry on doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. We have been doing the same thing for 60 years, and we are in danger of another generation of the same thing with this new Bill. It would be an act of insanity to progress into a new era with this derivative Bill and the Department in its current form. I do not for one second believe that all the members of this institution are insane, so I have hope that we will get out of this. I will move on to that hope.

Not only has the original Act failed in its specific, single objective, but it failed, as does this Bill, to set any meaningful objectives for other river-based human activities. For example, it set no objectives for power produced from our rivers. In fairness, it was written in an era when the old linen industry was dying out and mills were seen as a thing of the past. The electricity grid, powered by great coal-powered generating stations, was being introduced, and fossil fuels were powering us towards a bright future where everyone had lights and fridges in their homes. Power was cheap. In 1966, when the Act was written, Computers, iPads, electric cars and heat pumps were terms from a programme called 'Tomorrow's World'. In the era that I grew up in, AI was a new-found technology that led to a revolution in the breeding of livestock. I come from a farming background, and that is what the term AI meant until recently.

In the mill era's heyday in Northern Ireland, there were 6,773 recorded mill sites. That is a historic environment division stat. Only approximately 100 of those remain operational today. I have been privileged to spend the past 20 years of my life travelling all over Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, looking at those mills and reinstating many of them. That work has delivered many examples of habitat restoration and improved fish passage as a spin-off from generating power from our rivers. One action with multiple positive benefits. Having reviewed the sample of old Ordnance Survey (OS) maps from the early 1900s, in which the old mills are all detailed, we estimate that approximately 3,000 to 5,000 kilometres of mill races and ponds have been lost in Northern Ireland. That is a devastating loss not only of an industry but of habitat. A simple calculation of water volumes indicates that those river systems could have retained up to three times the volume of water in that same river as it has today in a dry spell. That is increased habitat and increased resilience to pollution. That era coincided with our rich fisheries, which have also been lost. Environmentalists scream that hydropower is bad for fish, yet when water power was abundant in our rivers, so were fish. When the mills and their infrastructure were decimated, so were our fish populations. The evidence of the history in Northern Ireland is clear. If you take one thought away from this meeting, it should be that that whole system worked. If you take that away, we can progress from there. The demise of both, through a combination of neglect, drainage schemes and renaturalisation agendas, has led us to where we are today.

Unfortunately, the destruction continues today. This year, in a project that I have been involved in, DAERA has tried to shut down a 400-metre stretch of habitat on the River Blackwater. No habitat regulation assessment; nothing. The directive from senior fisheries officers in DAERA was simply to shut it down. In planning applications for new hydros on those old mill sites, there is an insistence on screening, which prevents any habitat contribution from the mill races by applying a strict interpretation of the existing Act, to place screening at the point of abstraction and return, which prevents those habitats from being used and contributes to the overall productivity of the river systems, reinstating what was there. In Scotland, when we work with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), the attitude that we encounter in our work is, "What do we have to do to get this done?". When we worked with DAERA, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Loughs Agency on weir repairs — Andrew referred to the Sion Mills repair work that we did this year, repairing a major weir — multiple senior people commented that, "In an ideal world, this weir would not exist". That is the institutional mindset that has led to the failure that we witness today.

As a society, we have moved on from the 1960s, and we recognise that fossil fuels, while great, have a few issues associated with them. They are all imported — some from dodgy places where wars occasionally break out, and you end up paying £2 for a litre of diesel. They create a bit of pollution, and no local jobs are created in the recovery of fossil fuels. As a society, we have now written a few laws that set general targets for renewable energy and a sustainable future. Most of the renewable energy capacity that is being brought on comprises large-scale wind and solar power. It is mostly foreign-owned, and most of the profits go overseas. There is nothing in any of the legislation that makes any specific provision for hydropower. This Bill, as drafted, has no consideration for hydropower in its goals. The water framework directive that Andrew referred to is a European Act that drives much of our rivers policy. It makes significant provision for river-based activities such as hydropower and for the classification of rivers as heavily modified water bodies. All of our rivers meet that classification, yet we have failed to adopt that in Northern Ireland — another failing of DAERA's.

We believe that the scope of this Bill is wholly inadequate for the modern era. What is needed is not a fisheries Bill but a rivers Bill. It needs to be recognised that there are multiple objectives that should be set for our rivers. The precautionary objective is not one of them. We advocate for ambitious objectives, such as the recovery of our fish stocks to the levels of their heyday, and not some pathetic precautionary objective that sets a goal to improve what we have. Our second goal is the reinstatement of mill race architecture and infrastructure on our rivers in order to generate power while simultaneously restoring lost habitats. If we set out that second goal and deliver on it, we will achieve the first goal. We should also have other objectives for river-based tourism, fishing and access to rivers. We should have aquaculture goals to provide high-quality food sources from our rivers. We should have multiple objectives for our rivers.

It is clear to us that we used to have a major economy in the form of the linen industry, which was driven by the power from our rivers. Far from being destroyed, fisheries thrived in that era. The reinstatement of that economy to meet a modern-day need for renewable energy has the potential to create thousands of small, locally owned rural enterprises, each typically capable of supporting a single family, thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of fish. We ask you to send the Bill back so that it can be completely reworked to make it fit for today, with a future vision that everyone can get behind. Thank you for your time.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you very much, Trevor, for your presentation this morning. I can see your passion for hydropower and its benefits. Have you engaged directly with DAERA on the issues that you have raised in your paper and in this morning's presentation?

Mr McBurney: Andrew mentioned last week's conference, which, we are pleased to say, was attended by very senior people from DAERA. So the simple answer to your question is yes. Over the years, we have engaged on many of the issues, and I have talked about the institutional attitudes that we encountered. DAERA has an agenda that it would describe as "the renaturalisation" of our rivers, which is about turning our rivers into single channels. That is not what was on the ground when our river systems were highly productive. We had a linen-industry-based economy on the rivers, which simultaneously coexisted with rich fisheries. That is the policy and vision that we would love to see being restored. That represents a multiple win-win-and-win-again scenario — economic wins, rural economy wins, renewable energy wins, habitat wins and fishery wins. That vision is completely lacking in anything that is being presented to the Committee in this Bill. That is what we want to see implemented.

Mr Frazer: May I add to that? Actually, the answer to your question is no. We have, individually, talked to inland fisheries staff, but engagement with us as a whole has not happened. We were not consulted or contacted at all on the last river basin management plans. However, I am pleased to say that that has changed over the past three months, and we have had engagement, which is an improvement.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That is good to hear, thank you. I want to return to the question of the existing weirs and the mill infrastructure. I find it fascinating. There is a mill race near where I live at Necarne, in Irvinestown — I do not know whether you are familiar with it. It was before its time in bringing hydroelectric power to the Necarne area.

Your submission suggests that uncertainty surrounding routine maintenance of weirs, sluices and mill races has created practical problems for operators. Will you give an example of where necessary maintenance or repair work has been delayed or prevented because of the Department's interpretation of existing legislation?

Mr McBurney: The largest privately owned hydro in Northern Ireland is at Sion Mills on the River Mourne. The village of Sion Mills was built around the mill, which, in its heyday, employed 1,500 people. We had a presentation at our conference last week by the new owner of the mill, Jason Mitchell. Jason bought the mill last year. The weir was in a state of disrepair and in danger of imminent collapse. In March, we set out to carry out what we considered to be urgent repairs. What we were met with was a wall of regulation and obstinacy from the institutions involved in administering such work. To summarise, we had to make five applications to four government bodies: DAERA fisheries, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the Loughs Agency and the Rivers Agency. None of them progressed the applications with any urgency. It actually took an MLA acting on our behalf to drive those applications to a resolution and get permission to go ahead.

To simplify, the work was the equivalent of repairing potholes in roads. A lot of holes had been worn into the weir and needed to be filled with concrete. It took us four months — and we almost missed the weather windows — to get that work done because of the delays in the completion of the permits. We were very lucky. It was only through the hard endeavour of an MLA in holding the feet of those institutions to the fire that we achieved a resolution and got the permits issued on time. It was only through that endeavour that we managed to get the work done. It is now completed, and anglers acknowledge that it has been a success. Fish passage on the weir has been improved, and the future of power generation from the site has been secured.

Senior people in those institutions stood and told us that, in an ideal world, that weir would not be here. To us, that is like a dagger in the heart. It really is horrific to hear senior officials in the permitting organisations say those things, but that is the institutional mindset that we encounter day in and day out. It is fundamentally damaging to our rivers and to the opportunity to rebuild an economy on our rivers, and it needs to change.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): You question how the Bill will increase fish numbers in inland waters. What measures beyond those in the Bill are most important in restoring fish numbers?

Mr McBurney: From what I have seen, we have lost 3,000 to 5,000 kilometres of mill races from the landscape of Northern Ireland. That is a devastation of habitat. We need to reinstate that habitat and put programmes and policies in place to encourage reinstatement. I am not sitting here asking for a lot of public money. The beauty of generating and having an economy on our rivers is that there is money to be made through productive work, and that money could be used to enhance and recreate habitats. I am not sitting here asking for multiple millions of pounds in funding. What I am asking for is a planning policy that would facilitate and encourage that work.

In agriculture, there are programmes to reinstate hedgerows, for example. As part of countryside management, I would love to see a programme to reinstate mill races and mill ponds, encouraged through those sorts of programmes, and, alongside that, to generate power from our rivers. One of the major obstacles is grid connections. We ask that some measures are put in place to ensure that we achieve a diversified renewable energy production base and that there is an allocation of grid capacity to hydropower.

I mentioned in my presentation that most of the large-scale wind and large-scale solar infrastructure is owned by foreign companies, including pension companies in London, and major financial investors who are coming here and putting making investment. However, the money is flowing out of this country. This sector will be locally owned. Each project — each site — is individually small, but, collectively, the potential is huge. It is of the scale of the original linen industry, on which Northern Ireland was largely built.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. I can see your commitment.

Mr Frazer: I mentioned predation at sea and at the mouths of our rivers. I know that it is really difficult. Seals are a protected species, but they account for the loss of a very large number of salmon that should be coming up the rivers. That has to be addressed.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): The seal population, yes. Seals are the predators of salmon that are going into the system to spawn.

I have one more question before I go to our Deputy Chair. Do you feel that requiring the Department to justify the use of fixed penalties on an offence-by-offence basis could make enforcement more complex and resource-intensive?

Mr Frazer: We have answered that question in the submission. I am sure that you have read the legislation very carefully, but the fixed penalties do not apply to sections 48, 54, 58 or 59 of the 1996 Order. One of the disappointments for us when it comes to the Bill is that those are exactly the sections that are causing all the problems for us, and we cannot understand why there has been no attempt to address that. We keep being told, "Oh, it will be passed in secondary legislation", but why?

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. We have taken note of that.

Mr McAleer: I found your presentation very interesting. The village that I come from is Loughmacrory. There was a mill there historically. When you talk to people, you hear that they have fond memories of the mill. In fact, on the map, our village was referred to as "Milltown" because the mill was such a large part of the area. Trevor, I will quote your statistics: you said that, at one stage, there were 6,300 mills here but now there are just over 60. Is that right?

Mr McBurney: HydroNI, as a company, has built about 60 projects in the last 20 years. In a general sense, there are just over 100 working mills in Northern Ireland. The statistic that I quoted was 6,773 recorded mill sites. That is an historic environment division (HED) stat that I pulled off its website. That is a reflection of the linen industry primarily, although there were other mills, including corn mills and various other things.

I will describe the character of every river in our country, not just in Northern Ireland but in Southern Ireland as well. If you look at a map from the 1900s or 1920s, you will see a cascade of mills all the way down the river, and basically, the water was taken out, run along the mill race, through a mill and waterwheel and back into the river again. As the water came back into the river at one mill, there was, typically a few metres downstream, another weir and another mill race. Instead of having a single channel of river down a valley, you effectively, as you could see on the map, had a braided network of waterways. All of them were contiguous in terms of fish moving in and out of them. If a slug of pollution comes down a river today, it is in a narrow single channel of water and runs for miles. With the infrastructure of the past, the slug of pollution would have hit a dam or a pond, and a mill race gave the fish a sanctuary to run into. When the Channel Tunnel was built, it had fire escapes built in so that people could escape to a sanctuary. In the old river systems, the sanctuaries were built in as a consequence of the mill infrastructure. We have done away with all of that. Nowadays, when pollution incidents make the headlines, such as that about the 3,500 fish that were killed in the Crumlin river, it is because the robustness has been removed from our rivers. Our rivers used to be robust, and they are not any longer. If you have one takeaway from today, let it be that the old system worked. Take that one thought away from today. It can be hard to recall a lot of detail, but if you recall that one thing and implement it in policy, we will have achieved something here today.

Mr McAleer: Trevor, you mentioned in your presentation that there is a spin-off for habitats and fish. Can you elaborate on the habitat aspect?

Mr McBurney: Excellent question. Fish are the obvious aspect. If you go to a mill race that we have reinstated today, you will not have to look too hard to see small, juvenile fish in that body of water. If the mill race was not there, they would have nowhere to live. Beyond that, if you think about the character of the old mill races, they run along a contour and take water out at a level. They are sometimes referred to as a "carry" because the objective is to carry water along at an elevation and drop it back to a point where it returns to the river to get power. When you look at it on the ground, the mill races are hand-dug channels in the clay and soil of the area. They leak, and it is virtually impossible to build a mill race that does not leak unless you use concrete, which I am not advocating. I advocate that we learn the lessons of our great-grandparents' generation. Mill races were leaky water channels that leaked water into the island between the mill race and the river, which became wetland habitat. We are not just talking about rivers and fish; we are talking about all sorts of wetland habitat. Very often, the land is not suitable for agriculture, but it could be a field on a farm. We are not necessarily trying to recover it all, but in many cases, where we have reinstated the mill race, the two or three acres of narrow strip along the river, which may be a steep bank, will now have vegetation, waterfowl, lilies and a vibrant population of frogs, and the whole freshwater habitat is enabled and enriched.

Mr McAleer: Are there wader birds?

Mr McBurney: Yes. There will be everything that you associate with freshwater. Last week, I stood on the Upper Bann and looked at one of the sites where we had reinstated 400 metres of mill race. I stood beside it on a lovely sunny morning and looked at the hill facing the sun, and there were seven herons on the hill, standing about 20 metres apart. I have never seen a collection of herons like that before; I have only ever seen two herons together. If the local habitat is sustaining seven large herons, it must produce a lot of fish. We would love to see that recovered across Northern Ireland. It covers every community, river and village. The associations are long-held in local memory, and you have both referred to them. We do not have to think hard to come up with references in street names to mills, and every village has something like that in its history.

Mr McAleer: A couple of years ago, we had an interesting visit to a farm down in Castlederg, which had a hydro scheme on it. I think that most Committee members were there. Do you remember that, Thomas? It was Pollock's farm, I think. That was a good example. I am just thinking that, if there is ever a chance in the future, I would not mind going to visit that site.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): It would be very interesting to visit the mill race.

Mr McBurney: I think that I know Pollock's farm. We did the planning work for Howard Pollock.

Mr McAleer: I think that it was Jessica Pollock.

Mr McBurney: Jessica would be the daughter.

Mr McAleer: Aye, the daughter.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That was fascinating. Do members have any other questions?

Ms Finnegan: I had several questions, but you have covered really well the sustainability objective, as well as the Bill's not taking into account other activities, such as power generation, and the impact that they will have. The passion behind your briefing has been educational, if nothing else. The session has been very informative. Where I live, in south Armagh, on the border of County Monaghan and County Armagh, we have —.

Mr Frazer: Darkley mill. There are certainly lots of mills on the Callan.

Ms Finnegan: Yes. There is one that is probably lesser known called Corcullionglish mill. It is actually in County Monaghan, but it is where I live, on the border. It sits along the Fane river. I know how loved that mill is. I really appreciated this evidence session. There are obviously fundamental flaws in the Bill that need to be addressed to make it workable. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I think that the evidence session has really struck a chord with a lot of members.

Mr Frazer: Do you all know what heavily modified waterbodies and artificial waterbodies are? They are designations in the water framework directive. The water framework directive directs all environmental legislation here. The directive states that, if a river has been subjected to a whole lot of things such as drainage schemes, water abstraction for drinking water and the building of flood plains and walls, that waterbody may be designated as either "heavily modified" or "artificial". We are interested in the fact that the Department has not classified many of the rivers in Northern Ireland as heavily modified when the truth is that virtually every river has been modified. Trevor mentioned the Blackwater. An enormous drainage scheme was carried out on that in the 1980s and 1990s. A drainage scheme was carried out on our river, the River Maine, in the 1980s, to the extent that it actually reduced the length of the river by 1·4 kilometres, which is a lot. That has changed the hydrology of the river and is why the water framework directive allows the Department to designate that waterbody as having "good ecological potential", rather than the higher level of "good ecological status". For some reason, the Department does not want to address that matter. It has heavily modified waterbodies: the bottom of the Lagan and some of the canals and reservoirs, such as Killylane and Dungonnell, are regarded as being heavily modified, but not the River Maine below Dungonnell reservoir. That is supposed to achieve good ecological status, whereas it should, in fact, only have to achieve good ecological potential.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I will return to a couple of members who indicated that they wanted to speak. Tom, did you want to come in?

Mr T Buchanan: On one brief thing. Thank you for your presentation. I, again, commend you for the work that was done to Sion Mills, because it was in real need of work to keep it from falling away and no longer being useful. Trevor, at the end of your presentation, you said that the Bill is unworkable for today and the future. Could the Bill be adequately amended to make it fit for today and the future?

Mr McBurney: The quick answer to your question is yes. You have to have belief that there is potential to make things better. Let me start with the title of the Bill. The title of the Bill contains "Fisheries". I do not believe that that addresses the scope of what we should be addressing. The title should contain "Rivers", or something that more broadly encompasses the range of multiple human interests that we should be deriving from our rivers and the economic potential from our rivers, as well as the habitat and fisheries potential.

I set out in my statement the objectives that I would like to see in the Bill that are absent. The original Bill had a simple, single objective: the conservation of our fisheries. We failed in that. I am not blaming the Bill entirely for that. A lot of the pressures came from major forces in technology, moving to man-made textiles from natural linens, and so on, and the roll-out of fossil fuels. All of those things were things of the past. We are in a different era now. The era that we are in today is one in which we have to find a sustainable future. We cannot be dependent on fossil fuels. We need to have a sustainable economy where we are generating as much of our energy as we can from local sources. There are all sorts of good reasons for doing that. Those should be the targets of a major review of legislation that is being undertaken by this body at this time.

Mr Frazer: We have made suggested amendments, and they are pretty detailed. If they were addressed, and accepted, the answer would be yes. However, there are many things that are single focus and, as Trevor said, they do not consider the wider picture.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): It has been quite a comprehensive —.

Mr Frazer: A lot of work needs to go back into it, not least on the timing. It says that the Bill will come into effect as soon as it is passed by the Assembly. However, before that, they have to do the so-called fisheries policy statement.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): We will go to John, briefly, for a final question.

Mr Blair: I will be brief, Chair. I apologise to the two of you, because I had to be in the Chamber while you were beginning your presentations. I have read your submission; thank you for it. I have a quick point to make and a quick question, if the Chair allows me. We normally do our deliberations and actions separate from the presentations. I do not think that we have broken any rules on this one. In previous presentations from the Department, there were some indications, which concerned one or two of us at least, that there would be some sort of hybrid between elements of the old Bill — the 1966 Bill — and the new Bill. I am not sure how well or how clunky that would turn out to be. We could seek some clarification around that in relation to your section 54, 58 and 59 permits, for example, which seem to be omitted here. That might well be the plan. I will take that up with the Committee when we are planning our actions.

This is a presentation on a specific Bill. I am sure that you will accept that there is an interdepartmental element to some of the conversations that we are having around mill races, the restoration of waterways and all sorts of things. That is not something that could be done through the Fisheries Bill alone. Those are infrastructure-related issues, and they would involve Economy in respect of the grid connection; the Department for Infrastructure in respect of some of the waterway issues; and DAERA for fisheries management. Do you accept that a separate workstream needs to be done on those and that, if presented, they cannot be incorporated into this Bill?

Mr McBurney: This is multifaceted. If you want to start looking at different Departments, I totally accept that there are Economy issues.

Mr Blair: There are also council issues.

Mr McBurney: There are major implications for the Department for Infrastructure, as there are infrastructure projects. There is also an Economy side to it.
How exactly that whole ball of issues is addressed is, ultimately, for you guys to decide and us to be consulted on and to comment on. I just want to see that agenda addressed and incorporated into a wider policy framework, which is taken up by each of those Departments individually — if you want to take that approach.

If you are asking me what I would recommend, I would go back to the Sion Mills case. We had to make five different applications to four different functions of government in order to get permits to fill holes in a weir. In an ideal world, that would be handled by one Department or government organisation. Rather than having an inland fisheries Department, I would love there to be a rivers Department, which would take in all of those matters under a broad remit. Now, I know that that would drive a coach and horses through existing structures but, for me, dealing with multidisciplines and multiple functions of government —

Mr Blair: Different agencies.

Mr McBurney: — each of them with a narrow focus, is not efficient. I would love to see that, but that is obviously going way beyond the scope of the Bill.

Mr Frazer: That issue will come in front of you in relation to the River Bann where, as you know, there are very large structures. Carnroe weir is in deep trouble because repairs need to be done. That structure is owned by Waterways Ireland, but the Honourable The Irish Society owns the bed of the river. DFI Rivers and others will have to deliberate on how that structure is repaired.

Mr Blair: As will DAERA on the fish. I know what you are saying.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): It is a multifaceted matter. Our discussion has broadened out today and not, strictly speaking, on the Bill, but on grid connections and renewable energy and so on. Thank you for what was a really fascinating presentation, which has raised a lot of questions. We have taken note of your proposed amendments, and we will look at all of the evidence that has been presented to the Committee, which will be incorporated in our report.

Mr Frazer: Will the Department respond to our proposed amendments?

The Committee Clerk: After all of the evidence has been taken and we get into our deliberations, the Committee will look at a summary of the evidence that has come before it, including any proposed amendments. It will, then, decide what amendments it may wish to encourage the Department to take. The Committee has the option to table its own amendments if the Department declines to take any particular amendments forward.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): You can follow the Committee's deliberations when the time comes. Thank you again for coming in this morning; it has been really interesting and we have had a great discussion.