The general view agreed at the Oireachtas Fisheries and Marine Committee by TDs and Senators who are members and by the Chief Executives of the nation’s leading fish producer organisations is that Ireland is and has been the ‘soft touch’ for other European nations.
This was the clear conclusion of the meeting in Leinster House on Tuesday, October 14, which discussed how other European nations and the European Commission have exploited and damaged Ireland’s fisheries resources.
That can no longer be tolerated was agreed, a view that was later endorsed by Fisheries Minister Timmy Dooley when he met the Committee in a separate session.
“It cannot be a business as usual approach at the EU,” he said. “The current situation where Ireland is suffering cannot be allowed to continue. There must be change.”
Minister Dooley said there would be difficulties in getting a better situation for Ireland, “because we do not have a veto and must build up relationships with other nations.”
“The nation, the government, has not defended our fishing industry,” said Sinn Fein’s Fisheries Spokesman, TD Padraig MacLochlainn. “Our fishermen, our industry, our coastal communities have been abandoned, while other nations have used Irish waters to make catches from which Irish fishermen are barred from making by the Common Fisheries Policy operated by the European Union. The fishing industries of those nations are benefiting from Irish waters while our own industry is suffering.”
There have been a number of meetings between sectors of the industry and the Oireachtas Committee over recent weeks, highlighting the serious economic situation because Irish boats are tied up in port, with insufficient quotas to catch fish, processing factories are facing cutbacks as a result, while other EU nations are building new boats and their industries developing, much of that based on catches made in Irish waters, which are extensively bigger than the EU allows to Irish boats.
If the Irish fishing industry is to survive, the situation must be changed, but the nations which control the largest catches, made in Irish waters, are unlikely to give way to Ireland gaining bigger quotas in its own waters.
The core of this problem is the original agreement made by the Irish Government for entry to the then EEC Common Market, when priority fishing rights for Irish vessels in Irish water was ceded to EU control and quota decisions then dictated by the bigger EU fishing nations.
The Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee, Conor McGuinness, told Minister Dooley that the government must take a “more assertive approach to the EU and stop being regarded as a 'soft touch.”
“This is a real test of the sovereignty of this nation about which there has been a lot of talk, but about which more action is needed,” he said.
