The Irish South & West Fish Producers Organisation based in Castletownbere, West Cork, has called on the Minister for the Marine to meet with it to discuss a Liquidity Scheme to assist the struggling inshore sector and ensure its very survival.
This follows the meeting of the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine with the Minister to discuss the sector's problems, which the National Inshore Fishermen’s Association highlighted in a previous meeting with the Committee, in other, separate meetings with TDs, and in a publicity campaign.
There has been criticism from inshore fishermen that the larger fish producer organisations do not represent them.
As reported by Afloat, the major FPOs recently formed a group to represent their interests at the European level.
The ISWFPO says that it has members “in all sectors of our fishing fleet, and one of those sectors is the hard-pressed inshore sector.
“Huge losses have been incurred by the Inshore Sector over the past 4 – 5 years due to worsening Global weather conditions, increases in storm activity and the impact of Global Warming on fish stocks. When taken with the as-yet unproven but highly noticeable impacts from new activities such as surveys for Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE), there has been a hugely significant collapse in key stocks such as Brown Crab.
“We are therefore requesting that Minister McConalogue and Government implement a Liquidity Scheme to assist the struggling inshore sector and ensure its very survival.
“We urge Minister McConalogue to meet with us to discuss the implementation of such a Scheme.”