Cormac Burke: Desperation is turning to anger in Ireland’s fishing industry

Irish Fishing & Seafood Alliance chairman writes that coastal communities are enraged at the effective sell-off of Irish fisheries

A flotilla of fishing boats passing Blackrock Castle on its way to the Port of Cork during a previous trawler demonstration. Cormac Burke says future protests may not be quite as polite. Picture: Dan Linehan

As readers see this article, there’ll be a temptation to think its just another fishing industry sob story — and indeed who could blame them?

It is decades since we’ve heard anything positive and yet this sector consists of thousands of people in coastal communities crying out that their traditional way of life is being gradually eliminated and eradicated by government.

I could launch into the tragic list of catastrophes that have befallen the fishing sector over the last 20 years due to blatant mismanagement by successive governments, marine ministers, and senior civil servants but these tragedies were more by design than by accident.

The Irish public rarely gets to see the true face of the fishing sector and how our politicians managed to get Ireland’s fishermen the worst possible deal from Brexit negotiations, and soon followed this with a meek submission of access to the Rockall grounds for Irish vessels.

Today there remains a pelagic fleet (mackerel/herring/scad) and processing sector facing 40% cuts in quotas and a demersal fleet (whitefish) currently being reduced by one third, approximately 50 boats, due to decommissioning as a result of loss of quotas in the Brexit deal.

Meanwhile, the small boat fleet, 70% of the fleet in every EU nation, seems abandoned by this Government who appear to care little whether this sector survives or not.

Put simply, when the UK withdrew from the EU and the fleets of other nations lost access to British waters, the EU compensated them by giving them access to catch the same amount of quota in Irish waters instead.

Considering the overall available amount is scientifically advised by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) the result is that the Irish fleet is only allowed catch 15% of the fish in their own waters while they must watch other nations catching Irish fish in Irish waters, land into Irish ports, and load them into lorries to go back to the continent.

This equates to Irish waters being a football field — we own the field but we’re only allowed play in one penalty box.

For decades, everyone was led on by ministers and marine civil servants encouraging us to think that everything was the fault of the European Commission — and yes, there’s no doubt that there are fishing powers within Europe with greater influence than Ireland has.

The fishing industry, and the waters from which Irish vessels catch their fish, belong to the citizens of this nation and not to any Irish government — but the Irish public aren’t being told that the term ‘Irish waters’ is being removed and that we must accept that all waters are ‘EU waters’.

It is this point that fishing communities don’t understand — why there isn’t a national public outcry about this?

People need to understand that if the EU gives fishing rights in Irish waters to other EU nations and then ‘compensates’ Ireland with €600m to scrap 50 of its fleet then this, in business terms, is akin to an acquisition — an EU acquisition of an Irish resource in Irish waters.

Oil, gas, wind energy, and now fish — the priceless jewels in the crown of our country are quietly being sold off to the highest bidder with zero political accountability.

And when the next government comes in they will claim it was the fault of the previous one.

Often the reaction to articles such as this one is to call for protests in Dublin or Cork but this industry has politely done that before to no avail.

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Irish coastal communities feel that they’ve been polite too often — they were conned into believing that Ireland was getting a government that cared about the people who rely on the sea for their livelihoods.

But the storm clouds are gathering and there’s a growing feeling that the next protest won’t be a friendly ‘show and tell’ or a quiet march around the docks where random politicians can pop by and grab a photo opportunity and sneak off again.

Perhaps it’s time to dump a lorryload of fish outside Leinster House (as was done in the 1970s). And it’s time to insist that this Government stands by the coastal people of this island nation.

There currently exists a unified rage at the intentional mismanagement of an industry with so much potential, at making Ireland the laughing stock of EU fisheries, a disgust at how this, and previous governments, are replacing fishing with lucrative offshore energy deals, where even the term fishing industry is being replaced with the sexier-sounding ‘seafood sector’ and ‘fishermen’ is being diluted to ‘fishers’ or ‘seafarers’, and where ‘coastal communities’ are being renamed ‘rural regions’.

It is said that a sign of madness is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome — the mood in this industry is that they will no longer repeat the same non action and expect things to change.

• Cormac Burke is a former commercial fisherman from Killybegs, Co Donegal and former editor of Fishing News and Fishing News International. He is the chairman of the non-profit Irish Fishing & Seafood Alliance.