The area of rights based management represents one of the major problems facing the Irish Celtic Sea Herring fishery. Prior to 2012 there was an open access situation in the fishery for vessels under 25 m in length which had an automatic entitlement to fish for herring. The recent success in rebuilding the stock has resulted in a classic free rider issue with increased numbers of larger vessels booking in to the fishery. Many of these larger vessels had not participated in the fishery for much of the previous decade despite holding valid Celtic Sea Herring licenses. Attempts by the CSHMAC to address this issue in 2010 by specifying a preclusion on white
fish and shell fish fishing for the period of the herring fishery for any vessel booking in did not have the desired effect partly due to difficulties in obtaining timely information from the relevant Department officials. In 2012 a new access policy was published by the fisheries minister, (Dept. Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, 2012), which sought to limit access to vessels which landed Herring between 2006 and 2010. This has resulted in approximately 38 vessels qualifying for access to the fishery from 2012. Incidentally this is higher than the average participation over the previous 4 years.