DANA ROSEMARY
Madam, - I believe it is time for the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to take the initiative and negotiate that the Irish Box be exclusively for Irish fishing vessels only, thereby protecting the future of our fishing industry.
The recent EU compromise solution has resulted in north-western fishing vessels being allowed to leave port on only nine days per month. Our fishing industry is in turmoil. It is unacceptable that trawlers from other countries can continue fishing up to six miles from the Irish coast because their allocation for certain species of fish is much higher than our fleet's, even in Irish waters.
We must ask why Ireland, with 11 per cent of EU waters, is allocated just 5 per cent of the total catch. It is deplorable that the livelihood of Ireland's fishing community has been surrendered to the EU, and is now dictated by it.
Successive Irish governments have traded off Irish fishing rights in the hope that we would get compensated by agricultural subsidies and structural funds; but was it a fair trade? While Ireland has always been considered one of the major beneficiaries of the EU, this claim must now be challenged.
It is estimated that since we joined the European Community, the value of fish caught in Irish waters by trawlers from other member-states is twice that of all the grants and supports paid to this State over the same time period. In light of this fact, common ownership of fishing stocks by the EU should never have been permitted.
Everyone now agrees that in negotiating membership in the early 1970s serious mistakes were made whereby Ireland conceded such a high level of access to Irish fish stocks to EU members, in particular France and Spain.
The deliberations presently taking place in the European Council are unlikely to offer much hope to our beleaguered fishing communities. Indeed, in time Spanish demands to use the Irish Box seem likely to win approval by a qualified majority, according to EU Fisheries Committee chairman Struan Stevenson, unless our Government takes the initiative and calls for a ban on all foreign vessels in the Irish Box.
There is the alarming threat that Spanish fishermen, banned from Moroccan waters, will be given free access to Irish waters from January 1st 2003 and that there will be even further cuts in overall quotas. It seems that everything will be on the table in the new round of negotiations on EU fishing rights.
The result of the continual erosion of Irish fishing rights will be devastating to families in the fishing industry and to the regions in which they live. - Yours, etc.,
DANA ROSEMARY
SCALLON, MEP,
Colonial Buildings,
Eglinton Street,
Galway.