The Irish parliament has established a new committee focused on fisheries development, and the group has already called on the country to invest more in seafood processing while also cutting delays to its aquaculture licensing system.
“The [Irish] fishing sector has faced decades of neglect, mismanagement, underinvestment, and repeated policy failures that have held back – rather than supported – communities,” Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Chair Conor McGuinness said.
The committee – a first for Ireland’s parliament, which previously heard fisheries and aquaculture issues from its agricultural committee – aims to shine a light on the impact of regulatory overreach, poor enforcement, a lack of strategic investment, and low E.U. quota allocations on the nation’s fishing and aquaculture sectors, McGuiness said.
Regarding the latter issue, Irish fishing representatives have expressed extreme displeasure at a recent deal between the U.K. and the E.U. that largely maintained the same fishing quotas that the two sides established after Brexit.
“We call for a rebalancing of the Brexit burden. This requires an internal redistribution of the quotas,” Irish Fish Producers Organization CEO Aodh O’Donnell said. “The post-Brexit deal on fisheries was due to expire next year. While the details are yet to be established, the announcement on [19 May] of no changes to the current Brexit fishing arrangements is a serious concern to our coastal communities.”
Similarly, speaking at the first sitting of the Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, Donegal MP Padraig Mac Lochlainn said Ireland has the “richest fishing grounds in Europe” but is limited in its access to its own waters by E.U. quota rules.
Pointing to the impact of Brexit – which forced Ireland to give 40 percent of quotas handed by the E.U. to Britain – on the Irish fishing industry, Senator Manus Boyle said the new committee should visit the country’s six largest fishery harbors to see Irish boats “tied up for nine months of the year when everybody else is out fishing.”
Turning toward aquaculture development in the country, another committee member, Michael Cahill, said delays in the processing of aquaculture licenses has been a “huge issue” in the southern county of Kerry, which he represents.
Cahill’s comments build upon calls from industry representatives who have harped for years on the issue of aquaculture licenses in Ireland – concerning both delays in processing and the length of licenses granted.
Finian O’Sullivan, who is the aquaculture chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association and is also a mussel farmer, told SeafoodSource in April that the nation’s aquaculture output was just over 35,700 metric tons (MT) in 2023, the most recent year for which there are full figures. This total, O’Sullivan said, was well off a government target set a decade ago to increase aquaculture output to 87,000 MT by 2024.
