#Fishing - Marine Minister Simon Coveney has defended a deal reached in Brussels that will see a reduction in Ireland's quotas for prawn and haddock, which some argue will cost the economy many millions of euros.
As The Irish Times reports, the Federation of Irish Fishermen (FIF) says as many as 350 jobs could be lost following the EU Fisheries Council's agreement to cut the Irish prawn quota by 9% and the haddock quota by a third - a move FIF's chair Francis O'Donnell described as "a charter for discards".
O'Donnell says that the cuts to two of Ireland's most valuable catches, plus similar reductions for cod and whiting, will mean an 8% overall income loss for the Irish fishing fleet - despite significant and welcome quota increases for hake (49%), megrim in the north-west (20%) and monkfish in the south-west (15%).
Defending the deal, Minister Coveney says people "need to look at the whole package", emphasising that the "overall value of fishing opportunities" is the same as last year, at a value of €250,000, which in his view "can keep the fishing fleet intact, and commercially viable".
The Irish Times has much more on the story HERE.