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...
