Dempsey warns fishing industry ‘adapt or die’

COMMUNICATIONS and Marine Minister Noel Dempsey has challenged all sectors of the Irish fishing industry to adapt urgently or die.

In an outspoken interview with the Irish Examiner, the minister says the “nonsense on all sides” has to be cut out immediately and it is pointless to be constantly harking back to what happened in 1973 when the Irish fishing industry got a raw deal upon entering the European Economic Community.

“What we want to do is look forward to what is happening in 2010 and 2020.

“It will require tough decisions by the industry and by the Department and by everybody else, Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) and others.

“I am absolutely convinced, having looked at this and having gone through a lot of the details, that we have a wonderful opportunity if people start looking forward,” he said.

Mr Dempsey said that the time had come to look positively at the future.

“Consumption is going up. Prices are going up. There’s a good living there.

“It will probably have to be for a lesser number of people. We need to do in fishing what we did in agriculture, concentrate on the value-added,” he said.

He implied that the industry was ill-equipped for that scenario.

“The systems in Ireland for processing and in relation to selling, all of those are antiquated.

“The industry is too disjointed, too small and it’s not marketing its products very well,” he contended.

He said the background was that the quota was coming down and that illegal activity would be stamped out. But he said that if Ireland conserved its fish stock, it would not mean giving up.

“There’s a better living there but not from the set-up as it is,” he said.

He said that his junior minister John Brown had commissioned expert Noel Cawley to report on the future of the industry and that his findings would be considered in the context of the new National Development Plan.

“There’s an absolutely wonderful opportunity to get this right, for the fishing organisations and for the fishermen, for the Department to get its act together, along with BIM and the Marine Institute.

“We do not have a whole lot of time,” said Mr Dempsey.

The Minister and the fishing industry have been embroiled in a number of bitter rows this year over clamp-downs on illegal and over fishing; his tough Sea Fisheries Act and the recent decision to ban all drift netting for salmon in the future. It comes against a background of scientific advice that shows the stocks of some species have dropped to alarmingly low levels.