Displaying items by tag: Banshees of Inisherin
Banshees of Inisherin Success Too Late for Island Fishers
The Oscar-nominated film The Banshees of Inisherin has given tourism on the Aran island of Inis Mór and Mayo’s Achill island a boost, but such good fortune doesn’t extend to the island’s fishing vessels.
As The Examiner reports, third-generation Aran fisherman John Conneely of Inis Mór will deliver two fishing vessels to yards where they will be broken up, piece by piece, in a few weeks’ time.
One of Conneely’s two vessels, the 17-metre Connacht Ranger, has been in the family for over half a century. It was one of a fleet of timber boats built at boatyards then run by the State’s sea fisheries board, Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM).
The same State board - which had been tasked with building up a much-neglected industry half a century ago - is now responsible for the scheme to slim it back down.
The whitefish decommissioning scrappage scheme was drawn up by a Government seafood task force to pay up to 60 skipper owners compensation for destroying their vessels - due largely to the loss of quota caused by Brexit.
Conneely is one of a total of 42 owners who have accepted offers, out of 57 letters of offer issued by BIM.
The Brexit Adjustment Reserve, as Brussels calls the compensation fund, amounts to almost 1 billion euro and must be spent within two years. However, only a small percentage of this has been allocated for the fishing vessel scrappage scheme, in spite of the major impact of Brexit on coastal communities.
Read more in The Examiner here