AS FISH stocks decline and the price of diesel soars, fishermen are caught between rigid catch quotas and the loan demands of their bank managers. There is, in harsh economic terms, no future for many families. The Government admitted as much by providing funding to decommission one-third of our ageing whitefish fleet some time ago. But what was to have been a gradual and methodical process of painful adjustment has been turned on its head by rising fuel prices. The viability of many more whitefish boats is in doubt.
It is no comfort for the fishermen concerned to know that their counterparts in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal have engaged in violent protests to vent their anger. Thankfully, protest action here has been more measured. Irish fishermen called off a number of port blockades last week to provide time for Government and the EU Council of Ministers to devise a rescue package. An outline of those measures has now been circulated by the commission and will be discussed next week.
The package will allow governments to increase the level of aid for fleet decommissioning and provide short-term, emergency aid for those boats that temporarily stop fishing. It will also permit an increase in state aid for individual vessels. These are important concessions, designed primarily to address the issue of EU fleet overcapacity, which is destroying fish stocks and making the industry unsustainable. In that context the Government has a moral obligation to provide special financial support. The interests of Irish fishermen were sold out by the government, in favour of farmers, in negotiations on entry to the EC. It should now become payback time.
Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Brendan Smith defused the anger of trawlermen last week by promising Government support for "an EU-funded package of measures". But what is at issue here is a range of state-support measures which will almost certainly have to be funded nationally. In spite of a tough exchequer position, the Government should take the long-term view. It should also modify the existing decommissioning scheme for the industry because it provides no direct compensation for skippers and deckhands who lose their jobs. Treating fishermen with the same consideration farmers have invariably received would also end the possibility of a damaging port blockade. The whitefish fleet is going through torrid times because of over-capacity and quota limits. But the pelagic fleet, based mainly at Killybegs and Castletownbere, is both modern and profitable. A carefully calibrated response is in everyone's interests.