Eel fishermen on the River Shannon have called on the Government to create a new structure to manage the historic fishery on the State's largest river because of a dramatic decline in stocks in recent years.
Since the Ardnacrusha hydro-electric station was built in 1929, the ESB managed the river but is precluded by statute from developing it.
The Shannon Eel Fishermen's Association want to enter into a joint venture with the ESB to expand the management function of a resource once referred to as "Killaloe bacon".
"Ideally, the Shannon system should be managed by the association and the ESB, as a co-operative, which would recognise the statutory role of the ESB as owners of the fishery. The ESB for their part need to acknowledge that eel fishermen should be able to earn a living from the resource and the structures that allow this to take place should be recognised and developed," the association states in its proposal to the Minister for the Marine, Mr Fahey.
A strategic group to examine the national eel industry is expected to be established in the autumn.
Mr Gerry Gough, manager of the ESB's Fisheries Conservation, said there was no potential for the development of an eel industry on the Shannon at present. Eel farms on the continent had made inroads in the market and could produce eels more quickly and cheaply.
The ESB has stocked 15 tonnes of elvers in the waterway since 1989 as a conservation measure, taking them from surrounding tributaries and placing them upstream.
"Optimum stocking would have been 48 tonnes," said Mr Michael Flanagan, chairman of the fishermen's association and a member of the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board.
The 1935 Fisheries Act confines the ESB to "managing, conducting, and preserving" the Shannon fishery. "We are followers rather than leaders. That is our fundamental position on it," Mr Gough said.
But he added that even the conservation programme of placing an average of 1.5 elvers annually upstream is difficult to implement because of the increasing scarcity of the species.
A local researcher, Dr Kieran McCarthy, of NUI Galway, said the Shannon catchment with 40,000 hectares of inland water could be as productive as the Lough Neagh fishery which exports about 600 tonnes of eels annually. About 75 tonnes are exported from the Shannon system while most of the 25 tonnes of mature silver eels are placed below the dam at Ardnacrusha and allowed to make their journey to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.
Despite these efforts, the latest research found that, since 1994, there is a downward trend in "the catch per unit effort", the index of eel stock size.
Dr McCarthy said quantities of the mature silver eel have declined in all State fisheries. The Shannon and Erne systems are the only ones managed by the ESB.
The natural recruitment to all fisheries, including Lough Corrib/Lough Mask, had collapsed, he added, and Lough Neagh was also suffering. Action was needed at EU level in the face of an international decline in stocks, now blamed on oceanographic factors due to climate change.
"I want to see the bigger picture addressed and I want to see a European-wide approach to the management of eels, and whatever we do in Ireland should be part of that management strategy."
Meanwhile, the authors of the Shannon fishermen's proposal, Mr Flannery and Mr Gabriel Cox, believe their fishery is yielding only 10 per cent of its potential and that it could employ 300 fishermen. They state: "A very valuable fishery, worth in the region of £3 million per annum to local economies along the catchment, could exist if the ESB were to change policies towards the management of the Shannon eel fishery".
Mr Gough disagreed, saying that biological, marketing and economic evaluations had shown a viable industry was possible only in the context of a national strategy.
"If a strategy was applied at a national level, we would only be too delighted to play our part in it," Mr Gough said.