CEO says over regulation has led to the demise of the fishing industry

The fishing industry is facing the gravest challenges of our time with a decline in the number of young people joining the industry and a serious decline in profits reaped from the the processing and exporting sector, according to the Chief Executive Officer of the Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association (IFPEA), Brendan Byrne.

The Creenveen-based CEO said: “There is no doubt that we are facing the gravest challenges of our time as a result of Brexit and the TCA agreement. I suppose historically we have been treated very unfairly by the Common Fisheries Policy - they only allow us to catch, on average, 15% of all the fish in Irish waters; the other 85% is shared among other EU countries.”

He said that is the kernel of the problem and feels it is grossly unfair: “The historical shares of the fish we catch in our own waters is so minimal and that is leading us to a situation where within the processing and exporting sector, at present, our incomes this year will be down 30 to 40%.

“The Bord Iascaigh Mhara report of 2022 indicates that there is decline in the industry,” Mr Byrne said.

He added that the Brexit agreement dictates that 25%of the value of Irish fish went to the UK as a result of an agreement made in Europe. Mr Byrne said Ireland contributed 40% of the entire EU wide transfer of fishing stocks to the UK to facilitate the Brexit agreement.

Ireland has one of the richest fishing grounds in all of Europe and many other European countries reap great benefits from it whereas the Irish fishing industry is struggling at the moment, he said.
However he feels that there is a change on the horizon and this change can be facilitated through positive and cohesive engagement at Government level.

“Until now, as recently as the last number of months we lacked new thinking and direction within our department but thankfully we have new personnel in the department and there is a new dawn - hopefully we can put development and innovation front and centre because there is a bright future for the Irish fishing industry but the lack of cohesion among the various representative body in the fishing industry has been a problem - the lack of a functioning department that understood the fishing industry and was willing to fight for the Irish fishing industry at European level has been a massive problem for the last 20 years.”

He said that the over-regulation and control has played a huge part in the demise of the industry.
“We are over controlled and over regulated when you compare Ireland to other EU countries, such as France, the Netherlands or Spain -the amount of regulation in Ireland is unparalleled when you compare it and contrast it to other countries,” said Mr Byrne.

He slammed the manner in which he feels the department navigated the industry over the past two decades.

An Embarrassment
“For the past 20 years the Department was nothing short of an embarrassment – it was quintessentially anti-fishing and anti-industry," stated Mr Byrne.
He said that the solution to the problem is simple, saying that buy-in from the Government is vital.
“I have to compliment the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, whom I met on October 5, last. He has bought into it and he has realised that we have a national asset here that rather than talking about it being worth €1.1bn it should be worth €5bn to the economy and rather than employing sixteen thousand it should be employing fifty thousand people.”

He said that for 20 to 30 years of neglect in the Irish fishing industry “where one, the political arm has failed to recognise the potential and two, there was a complete lack and total lack of reform within a department that was allowed to cocoon itself into irrelevance but that is changing thankfully.”
He said The Seafood Taskforce Report - navigating change commissioned by Minister Charlie Mc Conalogue offers some degree of hope. However, he did add that it lacks ambition and innovation, two vital elements Mr Byrne feels are vital at this time.
“We are fortunate that we have a Donegal-based Marine Minister, he knows full well the challenges our sector faces and is ideally placed now to drive the industry forward with a new and focused political impetus,” he said.
Mr Byrne said the industry needs to be united, driven and focused in the same manner as other EU countries.

“We need to have a 10-year strategy and if we fail to have a strategy to revise the fishing industry, I can guarantee that there will be no fishing industry left. For too long the Irish fishing industry has remained too silent and far too divided, the present challenges facing us mean we must better organise ourselves in order to better represent our industry, repeating the same things over and over again only leads to the same failures that we have experienced for the past 20 years.”