Madam, - In recent days my friends and I have released close to 70,000 juvenile salmon into the River Liffey system. It was fitting that these hatchery-reared but wild fish were released around Carton House, the most beautiful of all the great Irish estates, it too partly man-made.
We hope that many of these fish will survive an excess of water-borne phosphates and migrate to grow fat in the Greenland seas and then return in time to grace the Liffey and the Ryewater - their new home.
These fish were never mine but I reared them and they were in my care as egg, alevin, parr and smolt. From the time of their release the law says they are the property of a Government Minister. He probably does not yet know of their existence and I am not sure if he even cares. Nevertheless, next year he will issue licences to hundreds of driftnet fishermen along the west and south coasts of Ireland to intercept the returning adult fish and kill them for profit.
I have grown very fond of these fish as one tends to do with animals. I really would prefer to see them back in the Liffey and the Ryewater. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK O'MOLLOY, Terenure, Dublin 6W.