At a meeting this week of Cork County Council\u2019s Western Division, Cllr Danny Collins called on the local authority to write to the Taoiseach and the relevant ministers to protest the 57,000-tonne reduction in Ireland\u2019s fishing quota next year in an EU fisheries deal revealed at the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne time we had over a thousand boats in our sea, now I believe it’s a hundred and forty fishing fleet. Basically they [the EU] are shafting us. What I\u2019m calling for is that the government will appeal this to the European Court of Justice. And as the fishermen told me yesterday, \u2018If they can do it for Apple surely they can do it for the fishing industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have boats coming in to Castletownbere from Belgium, Spain, France, UK and Germany. Basically tying up, fish going on trucks, destroying our roads and basically we’re getting nothing for it. The fishing industry has taken hit after hit over decades. To be quite honest, I think our representation in Europe is not strong enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cllr Collins said the quota cuts would mean a \u20ac10 million loss to our fishing sector and a \u20ac200 million loss to the processing and wider seafood sector. \u201cA fish factory closed in Union Hall, one of the major factors there was they couldn’t get the fish. And that\u2019s because it’s being shipped out to those countries I mentioned. Quotas are calculated by the size of our fleet. The size of our fleet is dwindling. The simple reason it\u2019s dwindling is because we don’t have the waters to fish in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know one man, he said he got a loan on a new boat on the strength of the mackerel quota. Seventy per cent of that [quota] now is gone. So where does he stand? If the fishing industry goes, that’s a job loss to this country of over 2,300 people. So something has to be done,\u201d the Independent Ireland councillor said.<\/p>\n
Cllr Joe Carroll agreed and described the latest fisheries deal as \u201ca disgrace. I honestly think that the people who are representing us in Europe that are accepting this kind of stuff, they should be told come home and hang their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said then when the pier extension was opened in Castletownbere last year, \u201cwe were talking to a group of fishermen and I said what wonderful facilities are here now. They just started laughing, \u2018They\u2019re not for us,\u2019 they said, \u2018they\u2019re for the Spaniards.\u2019 What they said was right, all the fish is going by road out to Spain and we can\u2019t even catch our own fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can’t have boats being scrapped all over the place and people getting a pittance for it and then we have no fish. And then go to Ballylickey and you\u2019ll see the trucks passing through and they\u2019re heading for Rosslare loaded with fish. It’s worth remembering that Belgium has a coastline of 41 miles and they have bigger quotas than we have. This is just not right. This government has to get stronger about this, they can’t keep accepting this,\u201d the Fianna Fail councillor said.<\/p>\n
Cllr Caroline Cronin also blasted the Brussels deal. \u201cWe have access to some of the best fishing grounds in the world and we’ve always been the envy of Europe and yet we’re left with the smallest quota. What we need now is a national response for the loss of our fish quotas. This massive loss will ripple right through the entire industry, affecting all our fishing communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current situation is that Irish boats steam out to fishing grounds where they’re surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of other fishing vessels from Europe. But the Irish boats must turn back as soon as they reach their quota, while the European boats can fish on because they have so much quota they can’t even use it. How is this acceptable? The system is designed to allow European countries to outvote us and claim our fish. We must find a way to reclaim our fishing rights,\u201d the Fine Gael councillor said.<\/p>\n
The council agreed to write to the government and also to the Munster MEPs.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a meeting this week of Cork County Council\u2019s Western Division, Cllr Danny Collins called on the local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,41726,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-202239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-peter-mccarthy","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}