Conor D McGuinness warns of imminent collapse of inshore fishing

Look, I have a couple of questions, and then I'll come to Deputy Lawless, if that's okay, and, okay. So, look, I remember I grew up in Gweldach, the nation, in West Waterford, and I remember my dad was fishing out of Helvick when I was young and going down the pier, and it was a hive of activity, a very exciting place to be as a youngster. It was a hive of activity, there were boats coming and going, there were vans strapping stuff down, there were vans collecting things. There was nets being mended, there was plenty of work for a young lad who was enterprising and didn't mind getting involved in mending nets or cleaning their boats or lifting stuff. And I go down to Helvick now, I don't live very far away, and it's empty. There's a couple of boats, but there's not much activity. Boats are tied up as much as they're out, if not more. The vans, they're not passing with anywhere near the frequency. And there's a whole lot less fishing activity. And then I look at other small harbours along the Waterford Coast that I'd be familiar with, Passage East, the inshore part of Dunmore East, Boat Strand, down to Ardmore and Ticknock and Balning Owl. You know, and there's little or no activity. And just reflecting on the road up to Dublin this morning, that epitomises what has happened, the slow, steady, designed decline of the fishing industry broadly, but particularly the inshore sector. And, Michael, you said that a year ago you were holding on by your fingernails. And, like, there's very little left to hold on to, and there's very little fingernail left. And it just occurs to me that we're about to see the end of the inshore fishing way of life and industry, unless something dramatic and drastic happens immediately. And I think that has to be the clear message coming from this committee. Young people, my neighbours, my friends, lads I went to school with, they have no notion. They could walk into, you know, they could go fishing in the morning, but they have no notion of doing it because they don't see a future in it and they don't see a way to make a livelihood. A couple of speakers have already mentioned the cultural and the heritage part of this. Again, I live in the Gael'thub, raising a family there through Irish, and I know that if the Gael'thub is allowed to fade out, it won't come back. The whole raison d'etre of it is that it is a living language community that has always been there, it's not that it was manufactured. And if the Irish fishing industry is allowed to die, that'll be the end of it. And if the inshore men go, they're not coming back. And there'll be no, no matter how many schemes, no matter who's in government, no matter what we might like to do from those benches, you can't recreate it. It has always been there. So the clear message, I think, and what I get from your document, because it's a very comprehensive document, it goes down through the multiplier effect that inshore fishing has in local economies, but it does much more than that. I think it sets out the emergency that's there. It sets out that this has to happen now. And it also used the word support, because I think you said it really aptly, that for other sectors, it's called support, and for fishing, it's a subsidy. It's like you're being subsidised. And this is about keeping a way of life, keeping our coastal communities alive. And I keep asking myself the question, does this government want to surrender our coastline? Does it want to surrender our communities? Is it giving up on Irish fishing? And I think the answer to those three questions is yes. Yes, by any metric, what government has demonstrated in successive governments through its policy positions is that, yes, it emphatically does want to surrender our coastline. It does want to surrender our coastal communities. And it does want to give up on our fishing industry. So we need to take a stand here. And you appreciate you've been here, that we're limited in what we can do. But our job here in this committee as the whole government to account is to point to policy positions and to point out wrongdoing and shortcomings by the Minister and by this government. So that's what we're going to do here. And your document sets off that conversation really strongly. But that's more of a statement than a question. But I'll give a chance to respond. I see John has his hand up. And then we'll go to you, Michael. Yeah. Thank you, Oscar. Is it by design that we're being squeezed out? When quota cuts come in, the pollock was closed, 1st of January, the insure sector was stopped, cannot fish. But why then? We talk about other fisheries in this document. Just take, for example, bass. The bass stocks are healthy. The science says they're healthy. There is a provision there to prosecute a fishery for bass with a small outtake that wouldn't affect the stocks. The stocks could still grow, yet we can't do it. There are so many roadblocks put in our way. But when it's going the other way, it can be done overnight. Stroke of a penny can be stopped. But we can't get access to these. And another point I'd like to make is we all hear about the supply chain, the food chain. There's something systematically wrong for all primary producers in this country when it's easier to make a living off the back of a primary producer than it is as a primary producer. I said it here before. We're told we're all links in the chain. But the primary producers are the anchors that hold those chains in place. And if you lose those anchors, your chain's gone. And to add to that, I mean, that first link in the chain, to borrow your metaphor, it's what creates the wealth, and everything else is a multiplier of that wealth. So I think, and the way you've put it there, I think that's the message that government just doesn't seem to get and that we have a duty to make them listen to it. And when those other suppliers in the chain, when their cost goes up, we have to take less. Michael. Yeah, on that, Deputy, you're 100% correct. But your two words there were most important when you said by design. This isn't happening by accident. Like, every single policy change in the fishing industry for the last 20 years was to benefit the minority at the cost of the majority. The only thing that was ever shared fairly amongst fishermen in Ireland was the criminal justice bill, where we were all treated as criminals. That was the only thing. Like, you also made a brilliant point, I thought, after December Council, when you asked, are we a sovereign nation or a colony? Because we seem to be a colony of the EU now. Well, we think we're a colony within a colony. Because what's been done to us with the taking of all these fisheries? And, like, everyone knows the damage seals are doing to the fish stocks around our coast. But no one is going to take it on. We're allowed to go fox something, badger culling, deer culling, everything. Like, if salmon fishing was reopened, and we just took a portion of what the seals are taking, the stocks would improve. But no one is willing to tackle it, I presume, because it would cost votes. But yet, minks, badgers, foxes, everything else, and none of them are doing the damage to the wildlife, because seal doesn't have a predator. So its prey will become extinct. We can fish for salmon and bass and trout, and not take half of what they're taking if the numbers are brought under control. Did you want to make a point earlier? I was just making a point about the task force, Conor, to be honest. And, like, going back to the last task force, I think I almost alone was the only dedicated inshore representative, I'll say, in there. From right across the entire inshore industry in the country. And I think that was probably a lot of responsibility, just to be on one guy. NIFA were just coming into PO status at the time. They weren't allowed to sit on that task force, which was unfortunate as well. But next time, and I know Michael is saying, we definitely need to get this document recommended and stuff, but in this task force, we need to get equal. We're not looking for majority representation or anything. We need to have equal representation in that room. The inshore fisheries forums provide a very unique way of providing that representation because those guys are elected on to their local riffs anyway from all around the country. The local fishermen select them and stuff. So they're well capable of representing, and each one of them would represent somewhere in the vicinity of 300 vessels or so. So they need to be part of that task force. We just need to have a balanced view inside. I know there's an independent chairman there, but there needs to be a balanced view inside, which indeed should stretch across to all of the committees that are at government level in this country when it comes to the fishing industry. But certainly on the task force, this time around, we need to have an equal voice in the room. That wasn't the case the last time. And henceforth, as Michael said earlier, where 200 million ended up going back to the EU, which was disgraceful at the end of it, to be honest. Thank you.