Processors at the leading Irish fishery port of Killybegs are suffering from a lack of raw materials, leaving recently added processing capacity idle.
At a committee hearing of the Irish Parliament, advocates for the port said a combination of competition for stocks from vessels of non-E.U. states like Norway, as well as new weighing requirements at the port, are causing vessels to unload elsewhere. The shift is causing issues for processing facilities – which added capacity with funds provided by the E.U. to compensate the country post-Brexit.
The tonnage of “fish for human consumption” being landed in the country’s top fishery port fell sharply from 141,000 metric tons (MT) to 82,000 MT between 2022 and 2023, Irish member of Parliament Padraic MacLochlainn said during a hearing in the Irish Parliament.
“The processing sector’s lack of raw material is seriously challenging,” Sinead McSherry, the top fisheries official at the Irish ministry of agriculture, said at the same committee hearing.
Irish Fish Producers Organization (IFPO) CEO Aodh O’Donnell told SeafoodSource the situation in Killybegs in 2024 is “much worse, with a major decline reported anecdotally in landings of key species for human consumption such as pelagics.”
Part of the reason for the lower landings, according to MacLochlainn, is Killybegs-based vessels are landing their catch at different ports “because they just cannot deal with the level of bureaucracy they face,” he said. The E.U. changed how Ireland is required to weight its catch in 2021, shifting the task of weighing to the port rather than in factories as was the previous method – a process which O’Donnell said needs refinement.
“A key to encouraging landings to Ireland is to streamline the process and minimize the level of bureaucracy associated with landing,” O’Donnell said. “While Ireland is unique in having some state-of-the-art monitoring and control technologies, the process for landings is perceived as being onerous and requiring review to align with European competitors.”
A shortage of raw materials risks the underuse of new processing equipment bankrolled by funds from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve – an E.U. scheme designed to compensate the Irish fishery sector for quota lost in the E.U. settlement with Britain. The scheme “put many millions of euros into processors in Killybegs in the form of capital investments, diversification, and innovation, and there have been some very successful projects there,” McSherry said.
IFPO, which is based in Killybegs, has blamed what it calls overfishing by Norwegian vessels for cuts in quotas that reduce the amount of fish Irish vessels and processors can catch. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which supplies scientific advice to the E.U. Commission, has recommended a 22 percent cut to the mackerel quota in 2025. That cut will likely end up going unheeded as coastal states fishing the stock struggle to set a quota-sharing agreement that is in line with the recommendations.
MacLochlainn suggested other E.U. countries whose companies have subsidiaries in Norway, Faroe Islands, and Iceland are using “clout” at the E.U. Commission to soften any push against fishing rights for these non-E.U. states.
McSherry also placed some of the blame on Norway and said the country has been setting “excessive and unsustainable” mackerel quotas and that the countries need a new sharing agreement on the stock. McSherry also said the E.U. Commission will reopen a 2012 regulation of measures to address unsustainable fishing of shared stocks by non-E.U. states.
In the meantime, IFPO wants Norwegian vessels banned from Irish waters until new arrangements are made that limit Norway’s ability to set unilateral quotas.
The E.U. has scheduled talks with Norway and the U.K. in early November and will have two rounds of talks with Norway in late October and early November.
