Campaigning priest calls on Taoiseach to visit Killybegs

An angry priest has challenged the taoiseach, Micheál Martin to visit the fishing capital Killybegs today to see at first hand how inaction and ineffective handling of the fishing industry has the potential to cause mayhem.

The taoiseach is attending the Ógra Fhianna Fáil National Youth Conference in Dungloe today.

Creeslough-based CC, Fr John Joe Duffy, a native of Burtonport, has warned the Department of the Marine and the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency (SFPA) was out of touch with the needs of the modern industry.

"I call on the Taoiseach to visit Killybegs this weekend and sort out the chaos our coastal communities have been thrown into by the department and the SFPA.

He said if he needed an example of what can happen all he had to do was travel five minutes down the road to visit Burtonport.

He warned the department the SFPA could have ports like Killybegs, Rossaveal, Castletownbere, Dunmore East, and Howth looking the same way in the next few years.

"It was once a premier fishing port but the way he will find it today will demonstrate why he needs to reshuffle, restructure, reform, and reinvigorate the fisheries department and those who either seek to destroy Irish fishing communities.

"Some of the people in the department and the SFPA are clearly out of their depth at sea and have lost their bearings and know not their position on the charts nor where they are at.

Fr Duffy's message was direct.

"If people give the Department of Marine, the Government, and the SFPA any more time they will turn Killybegs into another Burtonport.

"It is time for the entire industry onshore and offshore to unite and put an end to this craziness, this inequality, inability, inefficiency, downright draconian persecution, and damaging spin that would not be allowed to happen in any other European country.

"Reshuffle, restructure, reform, and reinvigorate so that Irish fishing and processing can survive and achieve the ambition that is clearly visible in the industry.

"Stop them from stifling the life out of the onshore and offshore industry and stop the attempts to sink our fishing communities. Enough is Enough. Time to give our fishing communities equality and fairness."

"There is a crushing and demolition of the entire onshore and offshore Irish fishing industry through persecution, sell-outs and decommissioning, ineffective governance, lack of understanding, lack of imagination and lack of leadership in government, the Department of Marine and the SFPA, '' he said.

He added: "The SFPA is being used as the private police force of the Department of Marine and their customer service department is the Four Courts financing all of this by wasting taxpayers' money hand over fist."