Fishing Protests Begin

feaven

Just read on the RTE news.ie that the southern fishermen have begun to block Cork and Waterford harbour. This is a significant move, and will put huge pressure on the government to begin negotiations with the industry.
However, as far as I'm aware, the Killybegs fleet hasn't got involved yet. They came down to Dublin about 2 years ago to demonstrate their abilities to block Dublin port very easily. If this was to happen, it could have huge impact on the whole country.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0610/fishing.html?rss

Stark

Let's just give them the internet monies.

feaven

i'll be giving them the internet... em... yaysies?
I'm from Killybegs and plenty of my family work in the fishing industry up there.
They've been treated very badly by the EU and the Irish government for well over 5 years now, all the communities dependant on fishing are on their last legs. I'm surprised nothing as severe as today has been done in protest before.

Padraig Mor

feaven wrote: »

i'll be giving them the internet... em... yaysies?
I'm from Killybegs and plenty of my family work in the fishing industry up there.
They've been treated very badly by the EU and the Irish government for well over 5 years now, all the communities dependant on fishing are on their last legs. I'm surprised nothing as severe as today has been done in protest before.

Were practically the whole Killybegs fleet not discovered to be illegally overfishing and falsifying their records a couple of years ago?

gordon_gekko

i believe theese fishing communitys have a very valid case

lostexpectation

i think they may be hypocrits

anyway apparently they tried to block airport fish imports last night rebuffed by the police
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=56183880

feaven

Padraig Mor wrote: »

Were practically the whole Killybegs fleet not discovered to be illegally overfishing and falsifying their records a couple of years ago?

Not the whole fleet, but a significant number of the larger trawlers were investigated, with little to no charges or fines. That was a complicated event anyway, the trawlers had been fishing beyond their EU quotas, with the Irish government turning a blind eye until they sold the industry out in exchange for a better farming subsidies deal (a larger voter base).

The reason for the current protests is that other EU countries continue to fish the same stocks that Ireland is not allowed to, because of the massive restrictions to their quotas, so they are making the point that the stocks are not being preserved at all by restricting Irish fishing, its just that Ireland never makes a case for its fishing industry to the EU.

jmayo

Does nobody find it a bit strange that we are importing fish by plane ?
The fishing industry was sold out years ago in order to get CAP for agriculture.
More votes in farming than fishing would be the reason.
Saying that the government never did much to help the fishing fleet and the Spanish affectively cleaned out what are our waters.

It's bit like how we sold out our oil and gas exploration rights.
Except in the latter case it was the decision of a certain politican, Ray Burke, who had habit of gaining from his deals.

lostexpectation

the thing is with fisherman they claim to be concrend about the environement and then when you ask why the overfished they say well we had to meet demand ya know, never take responsibility

LostinBlanch

jmayo wrote: »

Does nobody find it a bit strange that we are importing fish by plane ?
The fishing industry was sold out years ago in order to get CAP for agriculture.
More votes in farming than fishing would be the reason.
Saying that the government never did much to help the fishing fleet and the Spanish affectively cleaned out what are our waters.

It's bit like how we sold out our oil and gas exploration rights.
Except in the latter case it was the decision of a certain politican, Ray Burke, who had habit of gaining from his deals.

One slight correction there, a certain Bertie Ahern revisited Ray Burkes deal and sweetened the deal for the oil companies even more. This was about 1992. You know roughly around the time when he was looking for digouts, betting on the horses etc.

humanji

lostexpectation wrote:

the thing is with fisherman they claim to be concrend about the environement and then when you ask why the overfished they say well we had to meet demand ya know, never take responsibility

And wasn't there a situation a while ago where they wanted to cull the seal population because they were eating the fish the fishermen were trying to catch? What the f*ck else are seals going to eat?

That said, fishermen have always gotten a fairly raw deal all over the world. I'm curious as to whether the government will bother their arses to actually do something about all this (I somehow doubt they'll do anything until it's too late).

nhughes100

I certainly couldn't blame the fishermen for taking more then their quotas allow. It's absolutely ridiculous that we have to import fish that Irish fishermen have to throw back. Any fishing nation should not be forced to import if it can meet local demand. Another great law from the EU. If the laws regarding quotas were as enforced in other countries(cough spain cough) then maybe the Irish fishermen could at least have a level playing field but Spain wouldn't be too bothered about that. Ever walk by a building site in Spain? No high viz, no helmets etc EU H+S laws are optional over there along with fishing quotas.

lostexpectation

depends if the areas where the irish are fishing has depleting stock, one of their main gripes is that if the catch non-quota fish they can be hauled through the criminal courts and gettin serious criminal convictiosn as opposed to lower or civil courts for breaking industrial regulations but if they landing a load of fish that goes over say 50,000 euros worth or whatever the limit is for the lower courts then they should go to the more serious criminal court.

nhughes100

But surely the last people who want the fish stocks to run out are the fishermen?? There is simply now way we should have to import anything that can be sourced locally at a reasonable price.

lostexpectation

you'd think but who else has been overfishing other then the fishermen?

jmayo

A spokesman for fishermen the other day stated they had tabled proposals for non fishing in the cod spawing area during spawning season and the Icelandic fishermen have same policy which has resulted in cod numbers increasing.
What happened with proposal ? Nothing.

Fishing in Ireland has been treated as a very poor relation and a bvargaining chip to offer EU in return for other funds.
Oh and the value of the fishing rights we gave up are seriously large so don't let anyone say we never gave EU anything.
Fishing in EU has been treated as not being as important as agriculture and now we have a mess.
Maybe they view it as of no importance since you can't tag the fish and track their every bloody move through life :rolleyes:

nhughes100

lostexpectation wrote: »

you'd think but who else has been overfishing other then the fishermen?

Maybe the bogus ones like from a certain European country near Africa, but I think that career Irish fishermen would not fish themselves out of a job.

lostexpectation

you saying irish fishermen are the only ones in the world who haven't (consciously) overfished. f off.

nhughes100

Big difference between over fishing and fishing a species to the point of extinction in this part of the world. Try to be a bit more civil with the lingo.