THE government is facing fines of up to €40m from the European Union following three separate investigations into overfishing and false declarations of catches by Irish fishermen.

Inquiries by the gardai, the Marine Institute and fishing authorities in Scotland have uncovered systematic false declarations and illegal catches involving mackerel, monkfish and other threatened species.

Despite angry protests by fishermen in Dublin and other ports on Friday, Noel Dempsey, the minister for the marine, is vowing to force a tough new fisheries protection law through the Oireachtas without further change.

Dempsey has accused “a small group” of fishermen of flouting the law deliberately in order to make huge sums of money. In a letter to the Oireachtas marine committee on Friday, the minister rejected a bid to water down the sea fisheries bill that provides for fines of up to €100,000 for law breakers.

Dempsey said the new bill was necessary because two Supreme Court rulings — in the Browne case in 2003 and the Kennedy case last year — had “significantly undermined” existing fisheries protection laws and hampered the state’s powers to impose fines for illegal fishing.

“My duty is to protect the financial interests of the state and to prevent the taxpayer being burdened with extensive fines (from the EU) due to deliberate and well-planned breaches of fisheries laws,” the minister wrote to Noel O’Flynn, the committee chairman. “Fishermen who are honest and comply with the law have nothing to worry about in this bill.”

Another illegal landing of fish — believed to be €500,000 worth of mackerel — was discovered at Rossaveal, a Co Galway port, last week. Gardai believe more than 15 trucks were used to off-load catch from two trawlers in the middle of the night after a number of men had tried to disable quayside CCTV cameras installed by the fishery protection service.

Fishery protection officers making follow-up inquiries in the area the next day requested garda back-up after experiencing intimidation, government sources revealed. It has now emerged attempts to sabotage the CCTV cameras failed and videotapes of the incident have been handed over to the gardai by fisheries protection officers.

Government officials fear the exchequer now faces a fine in excess of €40m for illegal catches landed by Irish boats at Peterhead in Scotland. The Scottish executive says no formal discussions had taken place between British and EU officials on the overfishing investigation. But Scottish officials have told their counterparts in the department of the marine they believe Irish vessels illegally landed 6,000 tons of mackerel at Peterhead last year and up to 35,000 tons in 2003 and 2004.

If this overfishing is judged a breach of the Irish quota, the annual mackerel quota of 48,000 tons could be reduced by 40,000 next year — or over a number of years — to claw back the damage to stocks.

Edinburgh has informed the European commission’s fisheries directorate — known as “DG Fish” — of its investigations, and the department of the marine has informed Brussels about fresh concerns of fraud in Ireland.

The state maritime agency, the Marine Institute (MI), has uncovered patterns of systematic abuse by cross-checking results of its scientific surveys of fish catches with the log books filed by skippers to the department of the marine. Of the 111 fishing expeditions that carried MI personnel on board in recent years, 34 were not recorded on log books at all.

Other trips were characterised by massive underdeclaration of expensive quota-fish, such as monkfish, and overdeclaration of lesser-value non-quota fish, such as lemon sole. The underdeclarations were “of the order of 3:1 or 4:1”, MI officials told the department.

The MI findings emerged after Brendan Tuohy, secretary general at the department, asked officials to report any concerns they had about fishing irregularities.

Separately, the director of public prosecutions is considering criminal charges against six companies after a garda investigation into alleged overfishing in Killybegs, Rossaveal, Dingle and Castletownbere last year.

The government is now concerned that Ireland could suffer a similar fate to France, which was fined €20m for failures in its fishery protection regime and then hit with almost €60m for every six months it took to put a foolproof fishery protection regime in place.

The government’s sea fisheries bill triggered a pre-Christmas revolt among Fianna Fail backbenchers — including former agriculture minister Joe Walsh, who attacked its proposed powers to confiscate boats and equipment for illegal fishing offences. Dempsey withdrew the confiscation powers, reduced the maximum fine from €200,000 to €100,000 and brought in smaller fines for smaller boats.

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