It was into the wee hours of Wednesday December 11th that the final touches were put to EU fishing quota allocations for Ireland’s share for 2025 and, once again the Irish industry must listen to a marine minister acknowledging that the cuts are bad but making a statement along the lines of ‘it could have been worse’…
Cormac Burke, IFSA
Despite the attempts of Charlie McConalogue to soften the news by saying that “the Government's key priority was to maximise the preference for Irish ‘fishers’ within the recommended scientific advice”, there is no denying that yet again Ireland is going to lose even more quota and even more fishing opportunities next year.
Although Ireland has managed to get recognition of The Hague Preferences for mackerel for the first time ever - resulting in an expected quota cut of 22% now altered to a 16% cut - the Minister should not dare to presume this can be treated as some kind of success because, as per the agreement in 1976 that granted foreign vessels access to Irish waters, the Hague Preferences was and is the basis of that deal and should always be an automatic decision for any Irish quota in danger of dropping below a certain level (as was the case if the mackerel quota had been reduced by 22%).
Pelagics
This year’s Irish mackerel quota was approximately 47,000 tonnes, plus the 3,500 tonnes which came from the infamous Irish/Danish mackerel extra quota, and now, for 2025, the quota for this species will be (including approximately 1,200 tonnes from that same Irish/Danish quota) around 41,200 tonnes…
… however, this major loss to the pelagic sector will be somewhat tempered with the re-opening of the western horse mackerel (scad) sector which, for Ireland, will be 16,400 tonnes.
Meanwhile as the Irish quota of approximately 60,000 tonnes of lucrative blue whiting fishery will see a 5% reduction in 2025, there may be good news for the general wellbeing of this stock off the west of Ireland as it appears that Norway’s take (up around 201,000 tonnes in 2024) has been reduced, for now, to 81,000 tonnes - - this, it would seem, is due to a fallout resulting from Norway not keeping up their end of a deal and refusing access to certain EU fleets to their Atlanto Scandic herring - - but unlike the other quota agreements coming out of this week’s talks, this issue is due for renegotiation between the EU and Norway in January.
No good news for demersal sector
No one can remember the last time the Irish whitefish sector got some good news out of the December Council and this year is no different.
Low quotas lie ahead for cod, sole and pollock and, while a proposal of 44% reduction for Celtic Sea haddock was on the table, this was reset at a 23% cut - - nonetheless still a very damaging blow.
But it is the quota for the much relied upon prawns that will raise fears most amongst the demersal fleet with a national cut of 12% but for the Porcupine Bank prawn fishery this equates to a 23.5% slashing of quota (down from 16,550 to 12,055 tonnes).
Comment
With the December EU Council so often being a case of ‘swings and roundabouts’ and losses & gains for Ireland, it would seem that, overall, yet again, Ireland’s losses far outweigh any perceived gains.
Granted, the pelagic sector’s losses in mackerel and blue whiting have been slightly eased with the return of a scad quota but the low quotas for many whitefish species and the dreadful cuts to the nephrop fishery is a massive blow.
These cuts make a farce of the promises made under Ireland’s fleet decommissioning scheme when everyone was told that if the demersal fleet was reduced in size then there would be enough quota left for the rest of the fleet and then, only months later (and not for the first time after an Irish decommissioning scheme), those quotas are again slashed by the EU - - in what is just an ever-decreasing circle that no doubt will eventually lead to another decommissioning scheme and then another set of quota cuts.
On the face of it, getting the fleet ‘to fit the available quotas’ seems a logical step but when the EU then keeps moving the goalposts regarding quotas it clear what the long term outcome will be.
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