EU fishery ministers were last night engaged in their ritual end-of-year tussle to reach agreement on catch ceilings for next year.
The "hardline" Commission has insisted that the regime of cuts it is proposing reflect genuine threats to stocks.
The Irish delegation was particularly concerned about proposals to cut up to one-third off allowable catches off Co Donegal from vulnerable herring stocks, a quarter off the west coast of Scotland and 15 per cent in the Celtic Sea.
The chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, Mr Joey Murrin, said that while fishermen recognised the need for prudent management of stocks, they could not live with cuts of this size.
He recalled that horse mackerel catches had been increased by 20 per cent last year to get a political agreement between Irish and Dutch ministers.
The proposed cut this year, Mr Murrin said, was of exactly the same size.
He said the problem was "that there is still no proper assessment of what the stocks are", with the result that horse-trading was inevitable.
Ministers did agree, however, to a series of new control measures which the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods, described as crucial to the future management of stocks and which Ireland has done much to promote.
The measures, which come into force in July, involve common standards of control for non-EU nation boats, a doubling to four hours of the notice boats must give of arrival in port to allow for quayside controls and agreement to monitor supplies right up the market chain to supermarkets.
Dr Woods said agreement on the mandatory follow-up by each member-state of reports received from other states would mean a significant step forward in enforcement.
This means, for example, that if Ireland reports to Spain about boats believed to be fishing illegally, the latter country is bound to investigate and charge skippers if they are then found to have broken the rules.
Attempts by Denmark to double the imports of cheap herring into the EU were blocked, a move which will be reassuring to processors in the north-west.
World herring prices have slumped because of the crises in Russia and Asia.
