Government taskforce recommends €423m for fishing industry to help tackle Brexit losses

The flotilla of fishing boats passing Tivoli Docks on their way to the Port of Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

A Government taskforce has recommended that the fishing industry be given just over €423m to help it deal with Brexit-related losses.

The money, according to Navigating Change: the Report of the Seafood Task Force, is needed to help sustain seafood and coastal communities.

The taskforce was established by agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue to examine the implications of the EU/UK Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) for the fishing industry and coastal communities, and to consider initiatives to address those implications.

Agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue speaking to the media outside Leinster House. Picture: Gareth Chaney /Collins Photos Dublin.

The report says that the end of the Brexit withdrawal period has brought about the biggest change and disruption in EU-UK relations in 50 years, across all aspects of trade and society.

And, it says, the Irish seafood sector is "in the eye of the storm".

The Irish fleet has lost access to 15% of its annual quota, including stocks of prawn, monkfish, and haddock.

Brexit has also hit Ireland’s €80m worth of seafood exports to UK.

Since it began its deliberations last March, the taskforce has met 14 times and received over 72 submissions from its members as well as a further 27 through public consultation.

The establishment of a voluntary, temporary cessation scheme that would operate in the period to December 2021 was identified by the taskforce as a first step, and was at the centre of the recommendations of the interim report in June 2021. This voluntary tie-up scheme began on October 1.

The scale of investment needed to address the Brexit losses, to sustain a new sense of momentum and transition in our seafood and coastal communities will be significant, the taskforce report states.

It has determined the overall funding required to be in the order of €423.3m.

It suggests that the expenditure could include over €45m on a temporary tie-up scheme which will see boats unable to fish for certain months, and being compensated accordingly.

The money will also go on processing facilities, for which €90m has been allocated, and some €74m is needed to take around 60 boats out of the fleet.

Mr McConalogue said: “The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement has had some profoundly damaging effects for Ireland, not least for our fishing sector and the coastal communities that depend on fishing.

Such a once-in-a-generation event required a collective response involving the seafood businesses and coastal communities that are impacted and the full range of State bodies with a role to play in our response. 

"The final report charts a way forward for the sector and the coastal communities dependent upon it.

“I have asked my department to urgently examine the report, with a view to quickly implementing a comprehensive response to the impacts of the TCA on our fishing sector and coastal communities."